Developing emotional design : emotions as cognitive processes and their role in the design of interactive technologies

In the last 20 years, the debate on the role of emotions in the field of industrial design has grown exponentially. Emotional Design emerged as the effort to promote positive emotions (Norman, 2007) or pleasure in users (Jordan, 2002; Green and Jordan, 2003) by means of design properties of products and services. According to Van Gorp and Adams (2012), design based on emotions can affect overall user experience deeply, since emotions influence decision making, affect attention, memory, and generate meaning. It is possible to identify two main approaches to applied emotional design. The first is based on the modification of object's aesthetic appearance or interface, the latter focuses on promoting fluent and engaging interactions. The objective of the present contribution is to extend the discourse on emotional design, highlighting that technology designers can rely on other components beyond the above-mentioned aesthetic and engagement ones, in order to create innovative and effective devices. Indeed, emotions have further aspects that could be exploited by emotional designers.