Designing for love: The sex appeal of applications

In this talk from UX Salon 2014, Jacob Greenshpan argues that designers who want their products to be loved, used and never abandoned can learn from how people fall in love. His starting point is that we, and our users, form attachments to applications and devices through the same unconscious mating patterns that shape human relationships.

Understanding the mechanism behind that attraction, he suggests, is a practical tool for professional designers. If you know the three phases of love, you can design an app that people keep using at each stage. If you understand the role of dancing in sexual attraction, you can make better decisions about animation. These are examples from a few years of his own research and thinking on emotional engagement and seductive interfaces, and the session ends with the audience dancing together.

The UI-Patterns.com library covers related ideas, such as delighters and the peak-end rule, that help explain why some products earn lasting affection.