Affective design

Affective design describes the design of products, services, and user interfaces that aim to evoke intended emotional responses from consumers, ultimately improving customer satisfaction. It is often regarded within the domain of technology interaction and computing, in which emotional information is communicated to the computer from the user in a natural and comfortable way. The computer processes the emotional information and adapts or responds to try to improve the interaction in some way. specifically from the developing area of affective computing. Affective design serves an important role in user experience (UX) as it contributes to the improvement of the user's personal condition in relation to the computing system. Decision making, brand loyalty, and consumer connections have all been associated with the integration of affective design. The goals of affective design focus on providing users with an optimal, proactive experience. Amongst overlap with several fields, applications of affective design include ambient intelligence, human–robot interaction, and video games.

Emotions are an integral part of the human experience, and thus, play a role in how users and consumers interact with interfaces and products. Donald Norman, an academic in the field of human centered design, explored the importance of emotion in design, coining the concept of user centered design in the 1980s. He discussed design heuristics and advocated for providing users with a pleasurable experience through the application of emotional design. Visceral design relates to the immediate, subconscious responses to a product. Visceral level responses are rooted in biological and evolutionary processes that facilitate rapid assessment of encountered objects, including evaluations of their safety and the scope for further exploration. typography, or branding to convey the desired emotional state or association to the user. Along with the growth of human computer interaction, the past few decades have seen an increase in the discussion of emotions in relation to design. Affective design attempts to understand the emotional relationships between users and products as well as how products communicate affectively through their physical features. It aims to create artefacts capable of eliciting the most pleasurable experience possible for users, across all of their senses. Affective design works to create the optimal user experience by tailoring human interactions to individual users in response to their emotional input. It promotes affective interaction through communication, positioning itself as a mediator between human input and the computer's output. The effectiveness of affective design is measured with reference to feeling discrepancy, which defines the disparity between the target customer's emotional response and the actual emotions experienced by the user. Design that generates low feeling discrepancy is regarded as impactful affective design. By creating positive affective responses, brands generate memorable experiences for product users, improving commercial success. This leads to positive sale driving behaviours in consumers, such as spreading positive word of mouth, price insensitivity, and repurchasing.

The key challenge for affective design involves accurately identifying the user's affective needs, and, subsequently, the design of products that would address those needs. Current research focuses on the measurement and analysis of human interactions towards affective design and the assessment of the corresponding affective design features. Prioritising emotional value over usability can affect users’ satisfaction with a given product if it fails to meet their functional expectations. Direct measures of users’ emotional states present another challenge for affective design. Products and interfaces that incorporate affective computing into their design, specifically to create user experiences that adapt to the emotional state of the user, often rely on indirect measures, such as physiological arousal. It incorporates areas from computer science and engineering, including sensors, human computer interfaces, and artificial intelligence, to construct an adaptive, intelligent user environment. Collecting information from the environment and calculating the user’s anticipated needs, AmI lies at the intersection of the Internet of things and artificial intelligence Applying affective design, AmI considers human desires and emotional responses. One way AmI processes human emotions is through facial expressions, which allows the technology to recognize user emotions and respond accordingly. These electronic environments provide the users with an aesthetic and pleasurable experience by enhancing human product interactions. Human–robot interaction is another area in which affective design is applied, specifically with emotional robots. Recognizing human emotions, emotional robots are aware of the user’s emotions and engage in an emotional interaction with the user. Emotional robots are designed to mimic human emotions and cognition. They analyze the user’s emotions by gathering data through various methods, including facial recognition, body language, and physiological signals, and then they exhibit a behavioral response. Video games serve as an immersive form of entertainment that can apply affective design in their development. Emotions impact the user’s engagement and relationship with the video game, prompting designers to consider affective design in their creation of video games. Affective gaming, for example, explores how video games can analyze the player's emotions and change game features accordingly. Researchers suggest that game adaptability can also play a crucial role in facilitating a state of flow in players, which has been considered an integral part of enjoyable gaming experiences.