How the Android team makes emotional design

The Android Web site not only describes the specific elements of the application design, but also sets out the basic principles of Android application design. There are 17 of these principles, divided into three main categories: fascination, simplification, surprise (enchant,simplify and amaze). What are the considerations behind these principles?

At this year's I/O Conference, two designers described the psychological aspects of the Android design principles. The Co.Design website reports on this.

Based on a large number of user studies, two designers collaborated to develop design principles. They say that the Android team used UX design as an important reference element. The design team referred to the psychologist Barbara L. Fredrickson's view: To fight a negative emotion, three positive emotions are needed.

As a reference, the design team, when considering the problem, will judge the pros and cons of a solution based on the design principles. They use two jars as metaphors, one can put positive emotions and the other can display negative emotions. A good plan fills the jar of positive emotions, and the jar of negative emotion is empty.

For example, when designing the Android Master screen, how to let users know that they have reached the last screen? The design team can choose to do nothing. This will destroy two design principles, resulting in two negative emotions. (One rule: I always know where I am, and the other one is: it's not my fault.) Another option is to pop a line of text on the screen, tells the user that the last screen has been reached, but it still violates the "This is not my fault" principle, because the pop-up notification is like telling the user to do something wrong, in addition, it violates another principle "only important to disturb me".

The final solution for the design team is that when the user reaches the last screen, the screen tilts sideways and changes color if it continues to flip. With such animations, the user realizes that they have reached the last screen. This follows four design principles and adds four positive emotions, including surprises in a special way, sporadic encouragement, use of pictures rather than words, and tricks that can be used for it.

It is conceivable that, in the specific design process, the design team can not rigidly apply the principle. However, with this example, we can learn about the Android design team's focus on user sentiment. Today, mobile products have been deep into our lives, the product of small design details, often affect our mood. For designers, the pursuit of detail is not only a matter of beauty, but also a quality of responsibility to the user.