How Important Is Emotions Mapping in Mobile App Development?

Emotions play a significant role in the professional world as much as in the personal world. Nothing has remained solely technical or technological anymore. When you create something that connects with or vibes with the humans, they tend to bend towards it. Human beings are rational, but they are emotional as well. For them, Pizza or Chocolate are not just items but emotions.

How a user perceives, uses, interacts, and forms opinions about your digital product are primarily driven by how intelligent and intuitive your UX/UI is. Hence, the digital world has started adapting to emotion-driven concepts. Similarly, Mobile App Development has incorporated Emotions Mapping as well.

What Is Emotional Designing? Norman’s Design Specific Points

Designing a mobile app that invokes emotional vulnerability in the user can be categorized as a positive user experience. It is not a mere robotic app but more human and emotional. It appeals to various emotions in users, such as happiness, sadness, nostalgia, lust, excitement, delight, etc. The main factor with emotional mapping in mobile app development is a pleasure. Author Donald Norman has written a book called Emotional Design which talks about four types of pleasure that should be kept in mind while designing a mobile app:  

Negative Emotions and Positive Emotions

Emotions cannot always be positive. They can be negative as well. The negative emotions vary from anger to irritation to ignorance. People can doubt your ability to develop good mobile apps. If we leave the area of gaming where FEAR leads to channelizing energy into creating something positive, negative emotions can harm your reputation and credibility.

Many variables affect a human's emotions, and you might not appeal to all of them. Emotions are subjective and keep changing according to mood, situation, and other social and economic factors. If the mobile app you have created does not appeal to humans, they will look for options and never go out of it. Your product is not the only thing they have access to. Also, it doesn't get over with your users downloading the app; they need an interactive and user-friendly app. 

Thus, you must convert negative emotions into positive emotions towards your mobile app. And here is how you can do it:

1.   Eliminate All Things Negative

Remove every obstacle standing between your customer and their emotion. Create an app that appeals to their positive emotions and has the power to turn negative into positive. Spend time and money on research and development and find out what stands between your users and that click button that enables them to download the app.

2.   Make Connections That Are Not Robotic

As mentioned above, do the market research and find out about the fundamental requirements of consumers. Emotions of human beings are connected to various places, objects, or people, and try attracting that with your mobile app development. It needs to be done just once because it is just once that you need to appeal to their emotions. If you succeed in doing so, you'll be able to make a lasting connection with them, and they will keep coming back to you.

3.   Give Them the Desired Experience.

Eventually, one creates a mobile app to solve users' problems and delight them with the interaction and outcome. That feeling of delight is at the junction of visceral, behavioral, and reflective emotional design, as mentioned by Norman in his book. Users want/desire an experience, and then they must be able to interact with the app. App designers need to cultivate emotional responses at each level to be effective.

Norman’s Design Levels

1.   Visceral Level

Visceral design is not about the tangible benefits of a product but the process of tapping into a user's beliefs, feelings, and attitudes and eliciting an emotional response. The visceral design focuses on reactions that are triggered by the senses. It happens unconsciously. For example, if you see the design with dark and bold colors, you might feel gloomy. Whereas, if you see the design full of pastel colors, you might feel excited and happy. A positive visceral reaction can establish a positive context for future interactions. It's not only visual elements that trigger appeal to visceral reactions in human beings. They will be started by the language you use and how the tone might make them feel engaged and relatable.   

2.   Behavioral Level

This level refers to the usability of the mobile app in general. When one develops a mobile app, they need to focus on its usability because if they can't use the app effectively, they won't download it. And the ultimate goal of the developer is that his app is downloaded. The behavioral design also encompasses product function, performance, and effectiveness. When the user's interaction with the product is smooth, familiar, and exactly how he wants, they have a sense of empowerment, trust, and desire for more interactions. So, the designer must consider how quickly the user can meet their goals because speed is what users crave for. When the solution to the problem is found quicker than expected, the user stays loyal to the brand.

3.   Reflective Level

The reflective level focuses on how the user feels after interacting with an app. It can evoke emotions that extend beyond the product and encourage users to share their good experiences with the app with others. It promotes interaction with the app and affects the cultural impact. Since everyone is hard-wired for connection, it also reflects the desire for a shared experience. Various commercial advertisements focus on this level. They appeal to customers' emotions or generate some emotional link and get them to use their products. People are interested in learning about the product's story, and many brands give them that. It should be tried by mobile app developers with their users too.

Elements of Human Emotions in Mobile App Development

Seven elements appeal to human emotions in mobile app development. They are:

1. Style: The style of the mobile app is significantly noticed by users. If the app is not navigation friendly, they might not like it and withdraw themselves from it. The style can connect with vision and touch because taste and smell are yet to be incorporated into the technology.
2. Functional Value: Make sure that the app fulfils the needs of the customers; otherwise, there is no point in creating an app. For example, Amazon and Alibaba satisfy the needs of customers; hence people need not open their websites on laptops and computers.
3. Durability: This is to see if your app works in real-world conditions. When an app is all talk and no use like those health apps that guarantee a good body, there is no point in creating a useless app.
4. Reliability: The user should feel that he can rely on your app for the solutions he has been looking for. If your brand doesn’t solve his problem, it won't take a minute for him to uninstall your brand's app.
5. Usability: Your app should be helpful to your user. It needs to have a user interface that is pleasing to him.
6. Updating: Updating and upgrading from time to time for a user-friendly experience are necessary. Most apps don't do that, and they lag in the race. Hence, focus on bettering the app for the user from time to time.
7. Experience: In the end, the Experience of the user matters, so feedback and interactions are essential.

Why Do People Choose the Mobile Apps They Do?

People choose mobile apps for various reasons, mainly because they attract their attention and solve problems they did not know they had. For example, until online grocery stores came into the picture, people did not find it difficult to buy groceries from farmers' markets or stores. When these apps came into the market, people knew that going to market could be a problem at times, and these apps can solve it. Hence, people choose mobile apps; they do.

Wrapping Up:

Creating a mobile app that is effective and emotionally appealing is not an easy task. It requires skills and talent. Many apps fail because brands fail to hire the correct people who can handle digital solutions. Thus, one needs to hire the right mobile app developers for their brands. Goodtal is a portal which has the list of the best digital services all over the globe. You can find companies providing various Mobile App Developers, Web Developers, Ecommerce Developers, Blockchain Developers, Cloud Developers, QA Testers, etc with Goodtal. They will help you associate with the correct team for the best results for your brand, allowing you to focus on expanding your business.