How Are Personality Traits Conveyed in Digital Design?
To analyse the way in which personality traits are conveyed in digital design, I will be looking at the way Apple, Creative Sponge, BT and Giff Gaff design their websites to reflect their personal identities. By referring to Don Norman’s Emotional Design, I will be examining if these digital experiences work in line with his three main principles mentioned in the book. These are:
- Visceral Design – the visually stimulating part of a design. This concentrates on aesthetics and how the users feel when they initially look at the visual design.
- Behavioural Design – the usability of the design. Tests run to measure this trait are either quantitative by measuring metric data (e.g. time taken to complete a task) or qualitative by asking the user how the design performs and makes them feel (e.g. does the image of the person smiling make the user feel happy)
- Reflective Design – the way the user feels whilst using the product or service and how the user perceives themselves before, during and afterwards. “The reflective level mediates the effects of the behavioural level – users may well put up with difficulties and shortcomings in the usability of the smartwatch because they believe they will gain other, non-functional benefits from it.”. (Komninos, 2018)
Apple’s dominating corporate presence in the technological world has been curating since the 1970s. They have grown to become one of the most popular global brands and are always striving to be at the cutting-edge of their field by being imaginative and innovative. They reinforce this perception by having a product strap-line in big, bold, bright white lettering at the forefront of their products, relating back to these personality traits, whilst having the further reading in smaller writing going into great detail to provide logical and meticulous descriptions. Each of their product advertisements pages adheres to the same design guidelines. The same font for both the product name and description, with the title being in the ‘regular’ version and the tagline being a ‘lite’ version. The links are in the same typeface as the taglines but in blue or white, depending on if the page background is black or white. This enables them to be the same hierarchically, but different visually.
On Apple’s homepage, the iPhone XR is being advertised as brilliant and the iPhone XS as big.
The main header is heavily weighted, in a bold version of the font and the description titles are in the ‘regular’ version. The additional text is in the ‘lite’ version.
Due to the majority of their products coming in either black, grey or white, the promotional images shown on the products contain bright colours for contrast. The glossy texture on the product images also gives it a luxury and premium feel. The MacBook Pro, a very luxurious and powerful machine, is a perfect example of the reflective design Apple has created. Its promotional banner on the website is on a black background to help the text stand out. The content is also interesting to touch upon because the tagline follows a rule of three and also reflects the word ‘MacBook Pro’. The ‘M’ and ‘P’ have been carried through to form ‘More power. More performance. More pro’. This very clever technique encompasses Apple’s intelligent omnipresence in the world of technology. Additionally, the image used on the computer has swirly lines to break up the uniformed lines on the laptop. This adds a creative flair and lets the banner become more visually stimulating.
This promotional banner of the MacBook Pro is eye-catching, clever and artistic.
Apple’s website is modern and elegant with the monochrome background, images and text. This timeless design technique makes it difficult for aesthetic design to go out-of-date. The company’s online presence relies mainly on visceral design and has a strong brand identity, whilst their products are more about reflective design as Apple’s products have a psychological richness attached to them.
Creative Sponge is a medium-sized, graphic communications design agency who pride themselves in being artistic, trendy and versatile. Naturally, their design expertise can facilitate a modern look and feel and by including a film on their homepage and smooth web animations throughout the rest of the website, the website has a more interactive character. This interactivity between user and interface implies that people are able to interact with the company well in real life as well. In between promotional videos on the homepage, there are pieces of text. Using an uncapitalised, thin typeface on top of block coloured background helps to get the message across in a non-offensive manner. However, it is a nice touch to have the word ‘great’ in bold, as to mirror the logo. This type of design solidly contrasts the promotional video which is very busy, fast-paced and includes a lot of visual information.
The text slides on the homepage are simple yet effective.
A well-executed example of a smooth transition is that of the homepage to the full-page main menu. From a short promotional video on their homepage including bright, block-coloured backgrounds transitioning to sleek, thin, sans-serif text of quirky, unconventional menu headers such as ‘Work’, ‘People and Culture’, ‘Thinking and Doing’ and ‘Say Hello’. These, tied in with ‘Work’ and ‘Blog’ break up the conventional menu header system to display creativity and versatility in their field.
Creative Sponge’s full-page main menu
Creative Sponge relies on visceral design with a heavy influence on the qualitative, behavioural design by putting extra effort into the transitions and animations.
To contrast two websites in the same sector, I have chosen BT and GiffGaff. BT is a huge telecommunications company who have been operating for nearly 50 years, whereas GiffGaff caters for a smaller market and have only been around for 10 years. BT’s website shows business-like professionalism with a simple colour scheme and minimal frills. The company is recognised on a national scale, so a simple interface maintains a broad usability scope. It doesn’t feature a lot of transitional effects or animations which helps them become accessible to a wider range of customers. Moreover, their header image of two adults smiling in a homely environment reinforces trustworthiness and the phased background mirrors the ‘Ultrafast’ heading.
BT’s homepage shows the family friendliness.
On the other hand, GiffGaff takes a more casual approach with the use of paper texture and decorative patterns across the website’s pages, resulting in an individualistic approach to competing in the communications sector. Animations on hovered buttons are subtle enough to be playful and freethinking without making the site seem unprofessional. Furthermore, the combination of a grainy image of a young girl in front of an old car, the paper texture in the second section and ‘Come join us’ looking like it is placed on a ripped piece of paper help them to come across as humble, friendly, all-inclusive and genuine. It all evokes nostalgic feelings in the user of times gone by and this type of reflective design is targetted at young adults and brings users back to the days of pay-as-you-go SIM cards and youthful innocence.
GiffGaff’s homepage presents a very nostalgic vibe.
Due to BT’s long-lasting reputation, they have built their website around reflective design as everyone will have already heard their name before, whereas GiffGaff works with behavioural and visceral design to help the user become more engaged with their services in a more enjoyable manner.
Don Norman’s emotional design principles are present in all of these examples but Apple has executed all three especially well. Their aesthetic is common knowledge to people inside and outside of the communications industry and the behavioural design on their website and within their products, effects their reflective design of the way users view their products. Similarly, BT has a strong reputation to uphold, but their website lacks the same type of strong branding. Even though BT’s logo is recognisable, the visual design of their website is weak and undefined. If one was to strip away the text content but keep the images from the Apple and BT websites, Apple’s trademark look is a lot more concrete than BTs. In contrast, Creative Sponge’s website has a prominent presence on screen and this display of their skill-set puts faith in customers that they will do their creative job to a high standard. GiffGaff’s pairing of a fun visual design for a professional company to initiate feelings of nostalgia also instils a feeling of genuineness and trustworthiness.
References
Komninos, A. (2018). Norman’s Three Levels of Design. [online] The Interaction Design Foundation. Available at: https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/norman-s-three-levels-of-design [Accessed 27 Oct. 2018].