Nurturing human connection: how designers create emotionally-intelligent products

In this series, Readymag asks designers how to surpass user expectations and build emotionally-intelligent digital products. The good news is results show an increase in peer-to-peer recommendations, higher customer loyalty, and decreased customer churn.

Nurturing human connection: how designers create emotionally-intelligent products

Creating products that address real needs is at the core of design. This approach helped lay groundwork for the digital revolution that has reshaped the way we live and work over the last several decades. But today, as digital products permeate deeper aspects of our lives — like creativity, sexuality, health and spirituality — it’s not enough to be customer-centric.

Today’s consumers tend to gravitate toward brands who understand them and who they can trust. This fundamental change in behavior is forcing designers to reimagine old products. We at Readymag we carefully consider the potential emotional triggers and implications of our product: beyond creating a tool for producing web projects without coding, we strive to make an aesthetically attractive digital environment to spur the creativity of our users. This idea infuses both the interface of Readymag and our branding on all platforms: we reinterpret the forms of widgets as simple graphic objects and play with them as if they were parts of a construction set for kids.

In addition to solving problems, designers must also consider the type of relationship they want users to have with products. In practice, this means prioritizing trust and creating spaces for connection and joy.

Last but not least, the 2022 war in Ukraine is powerfully and painfully magnifying the interconnectedness of technology and human lives. The urge to prioritize empathy, equity, inclusion, and justice is clearly part of finding a new gold standard for people and technology.

In this series, Readymag asks designers how to surpass user expectations and build emotionally-intelligent digital products. The good news is results show an increase in peer-to-peer recommendations, higher customer loyalty, and decreased customer churn.

From this series you will learn: