Designing for Emotion

Chapter 6. Trust, Fear, and Forgiveness

The previous chapter showed us how we could use emotional design in many parts of the customer journey to draw people in, create memorable peak moments, and encourage deep engagement. Now let’s look at how we can also use it to address substantial emotional obstacles like fear, skepticism, and mistrust—any of which can break a business if not addressed.

As we discovered in Chapter 2, our brains break up complex situations into simple concepts so we can evaluate the costs and benefits of a decision. To protect ourselves from harm, we’re preprogrammed to be skeptical of new brands, products, situations, ...