Designing Joyful Experiences

(Originally published in 2015 at Aarki.com)

Our mobile phones are dear to us, we all know that. If able to achieve a certain level of trust from users, brands and advertisers will be a welcome addition to a user’s dear hand-held screen. If the timing is right and what you’re saying resonates with them, then you might just win their hearts and minds. It’s about creating experiences the user will enjoy. That’s why when you design for mobile, your creative team should think about how their users…

Feel

What feelings does your creative evoke? For you answer to this, you need to focus and understand your users first. You need to have a strong sense of empathy towards the people you are designing for. You need to put these users at the center of your design process and understand how they may feel about your message. Only then can you begin designing.

Know

Content is still king. You need to understand what messaging is relevant to your audience. Is it useful? Is it native and aligned to the content that the user is already consuming? Will it add to something to their knowledge base? If you answer yes to all of these questions, the user will most likely be more than willing to consume your content.

Do

Have you designed the mobile experience for joyful interactions? Does it entice play? Is it engaging enough? When building mobile interactions ensure to provide the user feedback, map functions properly, work with constraints and build in redundancy. These best practices will help your sail through what you want them to do.

A simple framework to follow for designing joyful mobile experiences that help brands and advertisers set themselves apart from competition and earn the trust of their audience. At Aarki, we believe joyful creative is the way into a user’s heart.