The post I wrote last month about NineDesirable Emotional States has garnered more attention that I anticipated – and
in response, I am getting the question of how an experience designer can
leverage this information to improve their customer experience. The original article explored the emotions,
and did not connect the dots. And so,
this follow up:
Tranquility
Tranquility pertains to the status quo: a
person feels happy (not merely contented) with their current situation, feeling
everything to be acceptable (or even excellent) just as it is.
The most common way in which this emotion is
leveraged is to destroy it, to cause a contented person to feel discontented
and want something more. This does not
qualify as leveraging positive emotion: it is undermining positive emotion for
the sake of restoring it – a sort of Munchausen-by-proxy approach to design,
and it is ethically questionable.
Since the emotion pertains to a satisfactory
status quo, one which is not motivation to change the way things are, the best
way to leverage tranquility is to extend it: to design products for durability
(a good will last a long time, or the benefits of a service will be
long-lasting). Where it is not possible
to make a good everlasting or a service’s benefits will wane, assurance can be
provided that the good will be replaced or the service will be repeated as
necessary to maintain the status quo.
Confidence
Confidence is a sense of power to be
successful at doing something in the future.
A person may experience a feeling of confidence in their capabilities,
even if they have no plan or reasonable expectation of using those
capabilities.
To create confidence, customer experience must
communicate the capabilities that the product will provide when it is
employed. Because you have this thing,
you will be able to accomplish this goal … when you get around to it.
The desire for confidence is what leads
consumers to amass a horde of unused products, so caution must be taken. To stay on the sunny side of the street,
ethically speaking, you must avoid creating or pandering to the desire for
power that is highly unlikely to be used in the future. To sell a product that will never be needed
is still a “sale” but eventually leads to discontent when the customer
recognizes the opportunity cost: the cost and effort expended for an
unnecessary product could have been applied to one that would have created
value.
Excitement
Excitement is the anticipation of a positive
outcome in the course of performing a task.
The key difference between confidence and excitement is that excitement
pertains to actions that are taking place immediately or in the very near
future, and that it is highly unsustainable: excitement fades quickly.
Creating excitement about a product in advance
is similar to creating confidence – the chief difference being that the
positive outcome does not depend on the capabilities of the customer
himself. It is the difference between
promising “you will enjoy a tasty meal” and “you will have the ability to prepare
a tasty meal” – the latter is confidence, the former excitement.
To create excitement in the course of action,
a customer experience must be designed to provide a sense of positive
progress. The experience provides
reassurance that the customer is doing the right thing and that a positive
outcome will be achieved if he continues in his course of action.
The evanescence of excitement is worth
mentioning, because it is a common mistake to attempt to generate excitement
too far in advance of an experience.
The further in the future an event will occur, the less likely a person
is to feel excited – and if you generate excitement too far in advance, it will
sour and the person will instead feel disappointment that the positive outcome
has not happened yet, and begin to doubt it ever will.
Relief
Relief is the emotional consequence of
achieving a positive outcome in spite of doubt, which may be a proactive
accomplishment but is more often merely the avoidance or mitigation of damage
from an external threat.
The most obvious example of commercial
solutions that deliver relief are medical care to alleviate pain or restore
health after illness or injury.
Insurance products work in much the same way for financially damaging
events. It is possible to cause a
person distress for the sake of providing relief afterward, but this is highly
unethical.
For the sensation of relief to be genuine, the
distress must be genuine (relief from psychological distress is also relief,
but it can be difficult to assess and the subject may not recognize the value
of the solution). Moreover, the
restoration or alleviation must also be genuine – a “fake cure” may sell on
hope, but will not re-sell unless it delivers genuine relief.
Satisfaction
Satisfaction pertains to philosophical fitness
rather than the functional outcome of undertaking an action. It is a sense of justice, that the outcome
was “right” regardless of whether the outcome is positive or negative.
Satisfaction can be difficult to deliver because it requires understanding and
meeting expectations, and not all customers have the same expectations.
While “customer satisfaction” is a term that
is so widely used it has lost its precise meaning, the core quality of
satisfaction is simple enough: the customer felt the service provider did what
he was supposed to do and what it was “right” for him to do. It can occur even when the outcome of a
service experience was a functional failure: the customer is satisfied that the
firm did its best, even though it did not ultimately succeed.
Conversely, satisfaction may not occur when a
service experience is successful, but the customer feels that the firm did
something wrong or unethical in their process. This is the reason that the public turns
against brands that are involved in scandals, even if their products are
perfectly satisfactory in meeting their functional needs.
Amusement
Amusement is the pleasure that arises from a
positive or benign discovery, the self-satisfaction experienced by a person who
has “solved” a mystery or untangled a dilemma.
It is an emotion that is short-lived and fades quickly.
Amusement is the emotional benefit of any new
product – it is the natural reaction to any non-threatening novelty. However, the amusement can generally be
effected only once: the second time a person solves a puzzle is not as
satisfactory as the first. Once they
have experienced it and know what to expect, there is no surprise that causes
amusement.
While many products can cause amusement once,
few can do it a second time without making significant changes to the product
itself. A person may enjoy a comedy
performance once, but the second time the jokes aren’t as funny – the performer
must come up with a new routine to re-create amusement.
Gratitude
Gratitude is an emotion felt by one person in
regard to another who has rendered them some benefit. It is an emotional component of any
successful brand experience, but is particularly pronounced in personal
services in which the customer meets the employee who provides service, or who
is responsible for making a good they enjoy.
I cannot conceive of a product whose primary
emotional benefit is gratitude, and there likely is not one because gratitude
is a reaction to what someone else has done – and there is no action that
merits gratitude in and of itself, as it is always attached to the consequences
of the action. So it will always be on
the periphery of a brand experience.
While gratitude is generally felt toward
individuals, it can also be attached to things through the process of
anthropomorphization. When people state
that they “love” a physical good, or that they feel affection toward a company
or brand, this is generally gratitude attaching itself to a non-human object or
idea.
Admiration
Admiration is a feeling of affiliation to an
individual – though, again, it can be attached to an anthropomorphized object,
company, or brand. An individual has
positive emotions toward another person and derives personal happiness in
having a social connection to them.
The most common cause of admiration is
quality: when a firm provides a product that impresses the customer, the
customer admires the product or the firm for its competence. It is not that the person admires the product,
but admires the qualities that the product embodies or suggests about its
maker.
Admiration can also be for non-functional
reasons. Quite often, a brand is admired
for the conduct of the company that makes it – hence many firms make use of
conspicuous charitable giving to align themselves with the moral sentiments of
desired market segments, thus creating a “brand halo” that wins admiration
regardless of the quality of their products.
Wonder
Wonder occurs when an experience defies
comprehension, but seems to pose no threat.
It is most often described in the context of something quite large,
whether physically or conceptually, or something that has a supernatural
quality about it that cannot quite be fathomed.
Products that are described by their customers
and prospects as “miracles” instill a sense of wonder – however, wonder is
short-lived. When a person comes to
understand something, becomes familiar and inured with it, the sense of wonder
fades. It is not an emotion that can be
repeated or sustained with much success, and is generally strongest in the
first encounter with a brand.
***
I’ve gone a bit further here in exploring how
brand experiences can be aligned with the positive emotional sates – though my
sense is that this has been a bit of a meander that has barely scratched the
surface. There are certainly other ways
in which these emotions can be leveraged as part of experience design – and much
is going to be specific to the product, the customer, and the particulars of
their situation.
No comments:
Post a Comment