Covid-19 created a global mental health pandemic at the same time it increased the amount of time we all spend online. Louis Sheppard, Chief Experience Officer at Unrvld, shares three key tactics for brands looking to consider the role their digital products play in shaping emotionally beneficial experiences for customers.
People’s lives have become more digitally focused in the last two years, while cases of anxiety and mental health disorders have increased. In this context, brands must begin to carefully consider the emotional quality of the digital experiences they offer and the role they play in people’s daily lives.
The emotional quality of their service is the next layer of this relationship, where brands can encourage customers to return to them by offering experiences that feel good to use and are remembered as positive experiences.
When we begin to think about the emotional qualities of an experience, we find it helpful to use the ‘three levels of design‘ as Don Norman defines it: visceral, behavioral, and reflective.
Visceral
This refers to consumers’ first impression when interacting with your site or app. By creating an instantly positive visceral experience, you are laying the groundwork for a deeper positive emotional connection.
Ask yourself: is the instant impression of your site or app designed to trigger this kind of feeling? Does it look good and attractive? These things can become triggers to take action, using the emotional impact to drive a behavioral decision.
behavioral
Behavior is how customers feel when they interact with your products online. It feels good? Is this an easy to use product and is it affordable? Design decisions can have a big impact on this.
Headspace is a great use case, showing visceral and behavioral elements in action. Headspace offers mental health services and the ultimate goal is to make the consumer feel happier. You can see how this is inherent in every aspect of the experience, from the interaction layer to the copy, to the illustration – it’s all mentally easy.
reflexive
The final element is reflective; how your consumer remembers the experience. People can have a lot of frustrations, and sometimes it seems that some websites are designed to create feelings of stress or anxiety. This can create a thin layer of stress, adding to an already busy day, leaving a bad memory for the customer who simply ‘gets through it’ instead of enjoying it.
You can play a more creative role in affecting the mood of your customers, for example elements of surprise can make the experience memorable. A personal message of thanks or a moment of humor on a dry registration form is unexpected and can mean a customer leaves with a positive feeling.
Emotionally sensitive CX in action
At Unrvld, we’ve been working with the recruitment specialists at Manpower Group to design a service that helps people overcome redundancy, an already stressful experience.
It was essential that we design with a strong awareness of the visceral, behavioral, and reflective aspects of the experience and the effect these might have on customers. We had to think carefully about establishing design principles that meant that every detail of the interface was creating a calm and measured atmosphere and, where possible, using positivity to balance the stressful feeling of redundancy.
Beyond transactionality
Much of the perceived business value of customer relationships is centered around the transactional aspects, with digital success frameworks and KPIs typically focusing on things like spend or records. These are critical to business performance, yet they can create limited conversion focus and build experiences that propel customers toward a desired goal, rather than giving them time and space to consider.
When it comes to investing in digital products and services, not only does there need to be a return on value for the customer, but these products also need to drive business growth.
The key is to build lasting relationships with clients, based on a deep understanding of what they need not only in a business sense, but also emotionally. We have a range of methods to meet this more intangible goal, using research and consultation to develop a qualitative understanding of the emotional needs of the people we are designing for.
As cases of mental health issues rise, we need to ask ourselves if we are helping our clients live happy digital lives or if we are creating stressful lives. By making your product or service easier, more engaging, accessible, empowering, and positively memorable, you can improve customers’ emotional online experience, ensuring better engagement, long-term business growth, and better mental health.
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