14. March 2023

Look­ing back at our event “Design­ing emotion”

The speak­ers at our event “per­spec­tives by design — design­ing emo­tion” were pep­pered with ques­tions. Can emo­tions real­ly be designed? And is it even pos­si­ble to cap­ture them so method­i­cal­ly? How are emo­tions and design relat­ed? What does this mean for the use of form, col­or and mate­r­i­al? And what are emo­tions in general?

Dis­gust, sur­prise, fear, sad­ness, joy, anger — the spec­trum of emo­tions is broad, the tran­si­tions are flu­id and there are mixed forms. Psy­chol­o­gist Prof. Dr. Jen­nifer Schmidt gave an intro­duc­tion with an overview of estab­lished sci­en­tif­ic the­o­ries. And it quick­ly became clear: Even if humans like to see them­selves as ratio­nal beings, our actions are usu­al­ly uncon­scious­ly guid­ed by emo­tions and often against bet­ter knowl­edge and ratio­nal argu­ments. Above all pos­i­tive emo­tions (e.g. grat­i­tude, love, pride) and/or pos­i­tive affect were neglect­ed how­ev­er in their effect for a long time, so Schmidt. How­ev­er, pos­i­tive emo­tions can be aroused in a tar­get­ed man­ner by means of prod­uct design tai­lored to the tar­get group.

Oliver Saiz und Mareike Roth von bayern design Mitglied hochE Design (Foto. Thoimas Michalczyk).
(Foto: Thomas Michlczyk)

So how can emo­tions be designed — and how not? This is what the design­ers Mareike Roth and Oliv­er Saiz have been inves­ti­gat­ing for many years. On this evening, they shared some of their expe­ri­ences and insights and pre­sent­ed strate­gies and meth­ods for sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly ana­lyz­ing emo­tions and con­trol­ling them through the pre­cise use of form, col­or and mate­r­i­al. While think­ing about emo­tion­al design is sig­nif­i­cant­ly eas­i­er than design­ing itself, at the same time, all design is emo­tion­al design: “Non-emo­tion­al design sim­ply does­n’t exist.” But in the best case, emo­tion­al design remains invis­i­ble. Mareike Roth and Oliv­er Saiz used a spe­cial­ly devel­oped set of meth­ods to demon­strate how sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly they work with customers.

Thomas Krass­er, Senior Vice Pres­i­dent Busi­ness Devel­op­ment, and Corin­na Zei­dler, Direc­tor Brand Man­age­ment, from Schwan Cos­met­ics in Herolds­berg, Ger­many, report­ed on the result­ing design and busi­ness chal­lenges for prod­uct design, brand com­mu­ni­ca­tion and cor­po­rate iden­ti­ty, and how they can be overcome.

While net­work­ing after the talks, a crowd quick­ly formed around pho­tog­ra­ph­er Thomas Michal­czyk’s hands-on activ­i­ty, where vis­i­tors could try out for them­selves how sen­so­ry per­cep­tions can trig­ger cer­tain emo­tions. — and how this is reflect­ed in our facial expressions.

Many thanks to all our guests and espe­cial­ly to our speak­ers Prof. Dr. Jen­nifer Schmidt, Mareike Roth and Oliv­er Saiz from bay­ern design mem­ber hoch E Design  and Thomas Krass­er and Corin­na Zei­dler from Schwan Cos­met­ics. Thanks also go to bay­ern design mem­ber Design Offices Nürn­berg for the great loca­tion and Thomas Michal­czyk for the pho­to­graph­ic sup­port as well as to our pre­sen­ter Lilien Wege.