Hello & welcome back!
Today, we will apply visualisation methods to bring your idea to life and most importantly out of your head to share it with others.
Even though I initially only intended to create a mood board with you and have a sneak peak about colour psychology, I already must tell you that you will learn way more about colour psychology and a brief side track to emotional experience design.
I genuinely believe, it will help you to understand why it is important to create a solid foundation for your brand design to attract your dream audience as best as possible.
Objective: at the end of this article, you should have a started a mood board considering basic elements of colour psychology and envision potential side effects for your emotional experience design.
Pre-requisite for today’s written workshop
If you are tired of virtual tools and you like to get physical #HiKylie - yes please, get a board or massive sheet of paper. If you would like to get something more stable, get yourself a proper frame at one of your close DIY stores.
Otherwise, stay virtual and use tools such as miro, canva, pinterest or whatever you prefer [unpaid advertisement].
You can even have a landscape-oriented word file where you copy and paste in various screenshots. Whatever works for you, that’s you now!
If you are planning to create a physical board, make sure you pause every now and then and only glue your final thoughts onto it. #Sustainable
Mood-Board
You might have heard about mood boards before in case you had connections with product development or marketing teams.
A mood board is a great way to collect all the tiny puzzle pieces that help you envision your look and feel [mood] for your website. Therefore, it should contain:
- Typography
- Images
- Colour palettes
- Screenshots from other websites you like
- Product Images
Your mood board should basically contain everything you are dreaming of. It is a judgement free zone where you gather all looks and images that are matching your vision to bring it on a piece of paper to share with others. Then you can decide what you can keep or toss on the way or as some familiar four ladies would celebrate this process – having a “take or toss” party.
Again, this exercise will be an iterative process, but let’s not overthink it. You start to collect everything you like, can also include product pictures if this is what you will offer, your [desired] brand colours and sort things out on the way to become clearer with every step.
Action Time - Mood Board
Pause for 15 Minutes to gather all of the above and get started with the visualisation of your idea.
Intro Into Colour Psychology – Part 1
Even though the starting point might be quite intuitive, and I am a big believer of following your intuition, for certain matters it is recommendable to bring some sort of science into the process.
One is the “science” of Colour Psychology. Even though we are all quite complex human beings, and it is impossible to create something that fits us all, there were still a few studies conducted that proof how certain colours are perceived by the majority.
Let’ say – even though you personally consider “red” as your happy colour, a lot of other human beings would rather connect this colour to love, romance or warning signs. Therefore - when choosing your colour scheme for your presence, you might want to consider colour psychology as a cross-check.
Secondly, asking your audience for feedback is always a great idea for validation #YouAreNotYourUser.
This is also described as “colour symbolism” as human beings are attaching different meaning to various colours, which can happen in three ways:
- Biological factors: red = passion, anger, love, romance
- Cultural factors = red could mean wellbeing in Eastern societies
- Personal factors: happy as your first car was red (your own experience)
Why do you care about this?
You want to build trust and attention with your audience – ideally in a way to really find the people, who can really benefit from your product and service, and you are a match #winwin.
This approach should not be used to build traps, that random audiences are falling into for the pure sake of profit benefits of one party only #WinLoose #DarkUX
Dark UX is the term used to describe the intention of applying UX Design methodologies to manipulate and deceive users in order to increase engagement, conversion and profits at the expense of the user’s best interest.
Intro into Colour Psychology – Part 2
Let's carry on with the brief intro into colour psychology with some pink prisons and finding your perfect colour palette.
What is Colour Psychology?
Colour psychology describes the influence on emotions, behaviours and perceptions as different colours are believed to create specific feelings and associations.
This can be used when creating your brand image and website.
Have you ever heard about Baker-Miller pink? This specific colour of pink was deeply analysed in the 1970s and aimed to calm down violent prisoners. Therefore, quite a few cells were painted in pink.
The actual results are still being questioned and various studies, including some that were not conducted qualitatively were and might still be investigated on.
There has even been a song about the famous colour of Baker Milly Pink by Sofie Royer, who is also wearing the pink coloured dress in her video.
Colour Theory and Designer Terminology:
Let’s have a little deep dive into colours from a designer’s point of view understanding the main terminology, while also adding a few more colours - not everything needs to be in Baker Milly Pink.
Primary Colours:
Red, yellow and blue (RYB) and the main primary colours you need to create various other colours.
You might be more familiar with red, green and blue (RGB) as this is used in the digital space, which is additive.
Secondary Colours:
Two primary colours = create a secondary colours eg. Red + Yellow creates orange.
Tertiary Colours:
PrimaryColours + Secondary Colours = create tertiary Colours
Colour Temperature:
The more you mix with a cold [blue] vs warm [red] tone, you can influence the emotions.
Cold could be associated with calm and relaxing, whereas warmer tones can create a feeling of happiness and activeness.
Colours and their meaning
Adding on to our main colours with some meaning.
Red:
Strong positive associations: Love, passion, strengths, power, confidence excitement, energy
Strong negative associations: danger, anger, alerts.
Orange:
Warmth, creativity, adventure, freshness, happiness, attraction, success, happy, playful or youthful energy.
Yellow:
Optimism, cheerful happiness, warmth, caution, energy, intellect and bold informational messages.
Green:
Nature, health, growth, wealth, luck, envy, freshness, quality
Blue:
Trustworthiness, calm, soothing, friendly, professional, sadness, peace, loyalty, depth, authenticity.
Purple:
Royalty, Loyal, trustworthy, feminine, nobility, wisdom, luxury, imagination, mystery, spirituality.
Pink:
Passion, love, feminine, youthful, playful, compassion, sophistication, sincerity.
Strong pink can be alerting as well whereas a rather dusty rose is rather calming #HelloPrison
White:
Simplicity, innocence, peace, purity, cleanliness, emptiness, goodness.
Black:
Formality, elegance, sophistication, sorrow, boldness, death, mystery.
Action Time - Choose your Colour Palette:
Pause for 10 Minutes - now have a think about your products and services, the environment you would like to create and which emotions you would like to leverage. Which colours do you see for your business?
Colour Wheel of Emotions
I do not plan to literally re-invent the wheel here and believe there are more than enough well researched and written articles in case you would like to have a deep dive into the Colour Wheel of Emotions.
In short, the original theory was created by the american psychologist Robert Plutchik. The wheel is considering eight primary emotions, their opposite emotions, intensity and various potential combinations.
List of primary emotions:
- Joy
- Sadness
- Trust
- Disgust
- Fear
- Anger
- Surprise
- Anticipation
Low to high intensity of the primary emotions:
- Serenity – Joy -Ecstasy
- Pensiveness – Sadness - Grief
- Acceptance – Trust - Acceptance
- Boredom – Disgust - loathing
- Apprehension – Fear - terror
- Annoyance – Anger - Rage
- Distraction – Surprise - Amazement
- Interest – Anticipation - Vigilance
A negative emotion such as anger once might have started with annoyance. The theory describes if a lighter version of this emotion is not being checked on, can therefore evolve to something more intense and becomes anger.
Another great comparison I like are the two opposites of anticipation versus surprise.
To me [personal association] both were primarily connected to a positive feeling, as I consider a surprise something like an unexpected positive surprise.
A great example for this situation was a free starter my friends and me have recently received after waiting for a couple of minutes for our booked table at a french restaurant or anticipation like planned dinner or trip with a very good friend.
One example is an event you are looking forward to and the other one could be a pleasant surprise you could not foresee.
Either way, a surprise could also be negative. Such as, your suitcase did not make it on the same flight as you did.
Good thing though, various emotions can occur at the same time and this is where the experience design part is located.
Criticism of the Model:
Finally, as valid for most models, there has also been some criticism for the Plutchik’s model of colour such as not considering pride and shame, which are emotions some designers enjoy playing around with when it comes to gamification. Secondly, the model might be a bit too simplistic in some regards and not taking into account further emotional nuances.
Either way and to stay in alignment with the commentary from the colour symbolism, we are all quite complex individuals and therefore we can never design something for everyone.
However, the Wheel of Emotion is still a great starting point when it comes to defining the desired emotions that are aimed to be triggered.
Mini Adventure to Emotional Experience Design - The Suitcase Dilemma
Let’s explore the situation of the suitcase that did not make it to your destination airport with you in time.
The first notification might be informing you with an apologetic note, that your suitcase is still in transit and was not as quick as you boarding the connective flight.
A few minutes later you receive another notification telling you where it is, that it’s taken care of, and you will soon have a chance to book a delivery time slot to your home.
The initial negative surprise – depending of course on your individual mental state on that day [current mood + past experiences] could then be moving from dark red to pastel red with a dash of positive surprise, trust and joy.
The trusting part is important here and of course colours on their own cannot create this experience, but I want you to understand the bigger picture of your “Mood Board”.
The brand and image you are aiming to create, should stay consistent - especially when a not so pleasant situation is occurring. You want to mitigate those situations.
Action Time - Evaluating the Suitcase Dilemma
Pause for 5 – 10 Minutes to answer the following questions for you:
- What words would you like to use in this situation to calm it down?
- How would you like to be treated in such a scenario? #PracticeWhatYouPreach
- Which colours could support you in this situation to mitigate?
Write these notes down on a piece of paper. Once you have come up with your ideal wordings and image you would like to create, stick it onto your mood board.
Iterative non-overthinking process yes, but we do not want to create a trash board here. ;-).
I am a detail-lover and therefore, I want you to create a Mood-Board to already include several situations or processes for your business and how you plan to solve these.
Creating Mitigation Plans for unpleasant scenarios:
The main point here is - like the stressed-out colleague, who sends out alerting emails, even you might be stressed when unpleasant experiences are occurring. So, create a mitigation plan upfront that helps you to stay calm and communicate with an empathetic and clear solution approach when your clients first reactions might not be so calm #WinWin.
Now, the design part comes into play. What colours and words have you been thinking about to send out?
A classic dark red alert?
Think about the emails with exclamation marks you might have received by our favourite mate at work, who seems always very stressed and is literally sending out their emotions with red exclamation marks urgent email notifications.
Pause for 2 Minutes: What would this Email do to you? How would you feel?
Side Note about misused Alerts
Alerting messages that communicate a matter of urgency, can cause negative emotions, stress and to be frank - it can also have the consequence that this notification is losing it’s effect after a while.
On of my favourite examples of misused alerts, is still from my time living or travelling to the UK with fake or test fire-alarms. No matter where I've stayed, at a hotel, my student hall or the office. These incidents would happen so many times, that I would barely feel the need to really get up and run out of a building as none of these alarms were ever including a real danger. Thankfully that was the case, but I think you get the point.
Simply applying this knowledge to fake urgency emails or notifications – will consequence in letting the audience overlook real urgencies eventually as the notification and symbol for this use case has been overdone.
Solving the Suit-Case Situation Dilemma
Design for the Suitcase issue could therefore include calming colours to escalate the situation.
Therefore, you might want to skip red in the communication with the customer entirely but keep it for your own processes to help you and your team to be aware of the current urgent situation.
To still communicate some kind of urgency with the client you could consider a yellow warning, which is a bit lighter to still underline the seriousness of this situation. However - in order to offer some calming effects with your communicated solution to this situation, you could now include some cooler colours.
If a serious situation is occurring such as a delay or any situation where you cannot stick to your promises, it cannot only be smiled away, but you can be honest [think about your value card] and communicate with transparency to your client apologising, offer a solution to impair the dilemma.
See the below sample messages sent to you:
Option 1:
“Your suitcase was lost!”
Option 2
"We have a confession to make – we were not as quick as you delivering your suitcase to your connective flight.
Please bear with us for the next hour when we are arranging a new flight, and you will be offered a delivery slot to receive your suitcase as soon as.”
Action Time - Create some sample messages you can send to your client [Worst Case & Best Case Scenario]
How do these two messages differ to you? Think about potential situations. Of course, we will not only plan for worse case scenarios, but these are the situations where you should stay calm and cool.
Pause for 5 – 10 Minutes to write a message for a scenario for your business where you must mitigate a situation and communicate with your client.
Pause for 5 – 10 Minutes to think of a wording for a welcome message to a new customer you would like to send out at the beginning of the journey.
Yaaaaay! You have just started to create standard communication samples for two key scenarios for your business processes. Once, you are happy with the result, add all of them to your mood board.
Final Words
You made it through another pro-active article creating your mood board on a deeper level. I hope you now have a great starting point and ideas about the colours, fonts and wordings you would like to use.
The image you would like to create visually and the language you would like to use to communicate your image consistently while your customers and employees are navigating through their customer or employee journey.
If you have any questions or feedback and want to chat all things about mood boards, colours and emotional design, feel free to ping me. I promise as always – no strings attached, but #SharingIsCaring
Thanks for reading until here and wherever you are at right now, have a great day.
Victoria
PS: Would you like to read more about Plutchik’s Colour Wheel? Check out 6seconds.org reference below. They have a great interactive version of the wheel, which provides you a greater understanding about the model. [Unpaid advertisement, because of excitement]
References:
https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/design/discover/color-meaning.html
https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/design/discover/secondary-colors.html#
https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/color-symbolism?srsltid=AfmBOoq2wzZ4Ktcfn6AmGO66jkpg4pYk_XkMftbEROxGm8P24knGeZ1L
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4757-1987-1_1
https://www.6seconds.org/2025/02/06/plutchik-wheel-emotions/
https://www.usertesting.com/blog/color-ux-conversion-rates
https://www.ascendik.com/unlocking-the-palette-of-feelings-with-the-color-wheel-of-emotions/#page-content
https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/putting-some-emotion-into-your-design-plutchik-s-wheel-of-emotions