Engaging with the emotions in the UX design can make it memorable.
When was the last time you used something that seemed to fit perfectly?
Perhaps it was a product with such a beautiful design that it brought a big smile to your face or an app that showed up to predict every move you took. What made it special? Emotional design is the answer.
The goal of emotional design is to create experiences that speak to people on a personal level, not merely to make things seem nice. It’s why you smile while browsing a smooth interface or feel at ease when you see colours and forms that remind you of something you know. Your brain feels the design rather than just watching it.
We’ll lay out how your brain communicates with emotional design. We’ll study the science underlying emotional design’s power, from how your brain perceives visuals to how dopamine drives your happiness. You’ll see in the end how designers use this data to create memorable experiences that last long after we’ve signed out.
How Your Brain Processes Emotions
The limbic system of your brain is the emotional motor that drives your responses. The hippocampus, hypothalamus, and amygdala are important components of this system, and each one has an independent role in how you feel emotions.
Amygdala
Your brain’s emotional alarm system is the amygdala, which is located deep within the temporal lobe and shaped like an almond. It identifies emotional meaning in stimuli, particularly risk or fear. For instance, even before you consciously identify a snake, your amygdala quickly analyses the danger and triggers a fight-or-flight reaction.
Hippocampus
The hippocampus, which is located close to the amygdala, helps in connecting memories and emotions. This explains why an emotional song or fragrance may take you back to a memorable time. This link enhances the memorability of emotionally charged encounters in design.
Hypothalamus
The hypothalamus links emotions to bodily processes and controls your body’s stress responses. It controls the release of hormones that power your body’s responses, such as adrenaline. Your emotional reaction can get worse when the hypothalamus triggers stress signals in response to a failed online payment transaction.
These brain regions interact while handling user interfaces. A failed payment screen, for example, may first cause irritation (amygdala), which may then create a response of stress (hypothalamus) by recalling previous problems with the same system (hippocampus). The outcome? is a strong emotional response that can convince people to keep going or give up completely.
By being understanding of these processes, designers may anticipate and influence user reactions to create experiences that minimise painful triggers and increase good ones. The limbic system of your brain is the emotional motor that drives your responses. The hippocampus connects such feelings to memories, while the amygdala signals emotional importance. Emotionally charged designs are so memorable because of this collaboration.
The Power of Visuals
The basic data from images is processed by your occipital lobe, but emotions come into play via interactions with the frontal cortex and limbic system of your brain. A strong emotional reaction is produced when visual cues stimulate connections, memories, and emotions.
For instance, peaceful blues and greens silence the hypothalamus and lower stress levels, while heated colours like red and orange stimulate the amygdala and create a sense of urgency or excitement. In addition to stimulating the brain’s pattern recognition mechanisms, symmetrical designs and balanced layouts provide a feeling of satisfaction and order.
Think about the time you come across a payment problem on a website. A sense of urgency or irritation is triggered by the startling red error notice. Negative feelings may be increased by a busy interface or one with unclear instructions. However, by appealing to the user’s need for consistency and closure, error resolution animations and effortless changes may relax the user. Because of this emotional effect, graphics play a critical role in determining user experiences.
Have you ever experienced an unexpected feeling of satisfaction after completing a task in an app?
Dopamine is the “feel-good” molecule in your brain. Designers use elements like gamification, encouraging comments, and fun surprises to make the most of this reward system.
The principles and how the Duolingo gamification application used them are shown below.
The Emotional Design Principles
Don Norman, a well-known cognitive scientist and usability specialist who is considered the founder of user experience, originally outlined the fundamentals of emotional design in his 2004 book “Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things.” He proposed that human emotion and design interact on three levels: visceral, behavioural, and reflective. These levels, which make up the foundation of emotional design, each reflect a distinct way that consumers view and relate to objects.
Visceral Design
This focused on gut-level, immediate responses. First impressions and looks are key. Vibrant colours, modern user interfaces, and engaging animations engage viewers and provoke strong feelings right away. For instance, users get interested and involved when they see the vibrant, sparkly icons on the home screen of a smartphone.
As an example of the visceral level, users quickly get drawn in by Duolingo’s app’s lively colour schemes, humorous characters, and amusing animations. Positive first impressions are created by these visual components, which stimulate interest and excitement and encourage users to return to the app.
Behavioural Design
Usability is the main focus here. Positive emotions are evoked when a product works effectively and simply satisfies the user’s needs. For example, navigation apps that provide accurate, clear directions lower stress and increase dependability and confidence.
The Duolingo app gives users a clear way to track their progress with daily streaks, medals, and customised lesson plans. By offering a smooth and satisfying experience, these elements put an emphasis on use and functionality. The app’s sympathetic feedback mechanism, which includes kind reminders and support following errors, lowers stress levels and maintains users’ motivation to keep learning.
Reflective Design
Deeper relationships are handled through reflective design. It refers to a person’s own personality, values, and goals. Because they represent authority, quality, and acceptance of one’s self-image, luxury brands, for example, attract users.
Users of Duolingo build a sense of identity and success. As they advance, learners start to perceive themselves as proficient language learners, which is consistent with their objectives and self-perception. The app’s capacity to offer customised material strengthens users’ sense that they are beginning on a meaningful, personal development path, encouraging lifelong commitment and emotional connection.
Emotional Design’s Future in UX
Innovative interfaces that react to users’ emotions in real time are the way of the future for emotional design. Systems will be able to recognise voice tones, facial expressions, and biometric information because of advancements in AI and machine learning, allowing them to modify interactions accordingly.
To generate more powerful emotional reactions, future UX designs will include multimodal components like sound, touch, and perhaps smell. Virtual reality (VR) experiences, for example, have the potential to mimic environments that change based on the emotions of users, improving engagement.
AI-powered user interfaces will get more sympathetic, identifying users’ emotions and changing visuals, tone, or information to suit their feelings. An e-learning platform may, for instance, recognise when a user is becoming overloaded and change the tempo or offer supportive comments.
Wrapping Up
By using the brain’s emotional processing, emotional design turns digital experiences from useful to memorable. Designers may create interfaces that inspire happiness, satisfaction, and loyalty by knowing how consumers interpret images and react emotionally.
To ensure users feel understood without feeling forced, future emotional design must find a balance between personalisation and ethical issues. Empathetic and flexible designs will change our interactions with technology as UX develops, giving digital meets a more human feel.
References
- Norman, D. A. (2004). Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things. New York: Basic Books. https://www.nngroup.com/books/emotional-design
- Queensland Brain Institute. (n.d.). Limbic System. Retrieved from https://qbi.uq.edu.au/brain/brain-anatomy/limbic-system
- Duolingo. (2025). Language Learning Platform. Retrieved from https://www.duolingo.com
How Does Emotional Design Talk to Your Brain? was originally published in UX Planet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.