In order to tap into emotion when designing experiences, you need to travel outside of your own comfort zone—enter, the provocateur.
Years ago I loaded all my belongings into my tiny sports car and prepared to head for Los Angeles. A close friend asked me why I wanted to l leave Northern California, where I had a good job, good friends, and a nice place to live.
“It’s all too comfortable here,” I told him. “In L.A., I’ll start a new adventure, I’ll meet new people, with new ideas and new opportunities.”
And I did. Shortly after settling in Los Angeles I launched a career in journalism, followed by an exciting new career in UX design. But to be honest, it was a terrifying move.
It’s scary to abandon the safety of what already works. And that’s true for many UX writers and designers. We tend to produce in ruts because ruts are comfortable. But we need aspirational thinking and new ways of doing things to create delightful experiences that build lasting relationships with our customers—and these things are seldom born out of comfort.
As a content strategist for TurboTax, I’m convinced that if we don’t offer something that connects with people on an emotional level our competitors will. Products that appeal to an emotional need win every time. That’s why we need the courage to harness emotion in all our designs.
So how do we find the courage to let go of the status quo and start doing things that make us uncomfortable, things that could lead to emotional design? Provocation is a good place to start. True provocation—the kind that gets us thinking differently about a problem or a goal—lies beyond the resources at hand, like colleagues and other internal avenues for unpacking customer insights. You need to bring in people who can offer a completely different perspective.
Read more here: http://uxmag.com/articles/provocation-can-lead-to-emotional-design
