Prerequisites to Emotional Engagement

A colleague of mine was presenting some design concepts, and among them there was a graphic that caught my attention:  the graphic was an "hierarchy of emotions" that played upon the concept of Maslow's hierarchy of needs - which seemed clever but didn't quite fit. The mismatch gave me some qualms.

The Basic Concept

The basic concept illustrated* to the right suggests that emotions can be schematized on a hierarchy, similar to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Just as a person must address their physical needs before taking interest in social goals, so must certain requirements be fulfilled before interacting with a web site can begin to engage the emotions.

Unfortunately, there are a few problems with this illustration - and it's not just the cheesy background and illegible text, but more fundamental flaws with the concept that make it difficult for me to swallow, but yet which seem to have some very good (though badly presented) connotations.

And before proceeding, I'll not that I have not read Walter's books, in which this theory is presented, so my reaction may be superficial  - so perhaps he concedes these flaws, or has published a new edition that corrects them.  For now I am merely reacting to the ideas as presented in this information graphic.

The Problems

The first problem is that emotions aren't a hierarchy.  I do not need to satisfy or even avoid sadness in order to feel happiness (though the experience of sadness makes happiness all the more pleasurable) or even to feel irritation in order to feel anger (sometimes one progresses to another, other times it's anger right away).   And so the notion that emotions can be schematized as a hierarchy is flawed -  to riff off of a known theory gets attention and an initial sense of credibility, but it ultimately leads to confusion and failure if the relationship between concepts is not the same.

The second problem is that what appears in the diagram aren't emotions at all: functional - reliable - usable - pleasurable.  These are all qualities of a thing, not emotions a person experiences.   I do not ever recall being in a "usable" mood, and I don't recall any psychologist including that term in any list of emotions.

The third problem is that the steps seem out of sequence.   By the diagram, a person must feel that something is reliable before they can feel it is useful.  Setting aside the fact that these are more functional than emotional qualities, they are in the wrong order.   To feel that something is "reliable" I must use it and assess (logically)  that it has done what I expected it to do.   If it is not usable, I will not achieve an outcome, and will not be able to consider whether the outcome is reliable.

In all, Walter seems to be onto something, but calling it a "hierarchy of emotions" is the wrong thing, as is attempting to schematize the concepts in this way.   Maybe a better illustration would show these three qualities as pillars upholding emotional engagement (which is not always pleasurable, though that be our desire to make it so), or inlets to a stream, or something else. I'm not sure deciding on a graphic design is quite productive until the concept is rectified.

And in that regard, I do think that there's some substance here.   Which makes it all the more troubleing because if the basic idea was complete poppycock I could dismiss the bad graphic without giving it a second thought.  But it deserves a second thought ... and needs some rethinking.

The Potential

The potential here, and this is quite important, is to communicate to enthusiasts of emotional design that there are prerequisites to engaging the user on an emotional level.

This is particularly important because people who understand neither design nor psychology are gravitating toward the concept of "emotional design" in order to fob off half-baked notions as being supported by a body of theory they haven't even read.   That happens a lot, and it's never a good thing because they seem credible a while before the flaws are noticed - and because their misuse of the term causes the valid theory to be disregarded.

The problem those types often make is in attempting to use emotional engagement as a substitute for its prerequisites.   To take a user experience that fails to deliver value to the user and attempt to graft an "emotional" layer onto it rather than addressing the fundamental problem.

While it is true that we experience emotions about things that aren't useful (most "souvenirs" are plastic junk that serve no purpose other than to trigger the memory of an emotion so that we may re-experience it), it is not true the emotion can be used to make a pointless task feel fulfilling.

And this is where Walker has really stumbled onto something: that if something is not usable, functional, and reliable it cannot be intrinsically emotionally engaging.  You have to satisfy those three prerequisites to emotional engagement in order to become emotionally engaging (with the goal of fostering pleasant emotions).

***

In the end, I do think that Walker should abandon this information graphic, do a little more thinking on his theory, and try again in a future edition.   I might even pick up a copy to see what other ideas he has that are worth considering.   But for now, my sense is that I've extracted the value from the ore, in spite of its shortcomings, and that it is something of value, indeed.


* I snagged this graphic, but have no idea of the source.  I'll gladly provide credit and a link, though likely the creator should read this article to consider whether it's something he or she would care to have their name associated to, given its flaws.