Copyright © 2026 Authors retain the copyright of this article. This article is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

@article{184827,
        author = {Harsh Upadhyay},
        title = {The Role of Emotional Design in User-Centered Products},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2025},
        volume = {12},
        number = {4},
        pages = {3618-3630},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=184827},
        abstract = {There are a lot of products out there now that work perfectly fine, like they do what they’re made to do, but people still don’t connect with them. And when there’s no real connection, they just stop using it, even if it’s technically good. That’s where emotional design starts to matter more. It’s not just about how something functions anymore. It’s also about how it makes the person feel while using it and what kind of impression it leaves after.
This idea mostly came from Don Norman, who said there are three kinds of responses people have with a product. One is how it looks when they first see it (he calls that visceral), then how it works when they actually use it (that’s behavioral), and finally how they feel about it later when they think back (reflective). This paper is basically trying to see how those ideas can actually be used in design today when products are being built for users.
A bunch of companies already use emotional design in small ways but some do it properly, like from the start. I tried to look at those examples and see what they’re doing right. But it’s not all good either. Emotional outlook in design can also be used to push people to act in ways they didn’t really plan to, and that part gets a bit tricky. So this paper talks about both sides, the parts where emotional design makes products better, and also the places where it might be going too far.},
        keywords = {},
        month = {September},
        }