Artificial intelligence (AI) has quickly gained traction as a design tool. As helpful as it can be in ensuring functionality and accessibility, though, these are not the only factors to consider in user experience (UX).
A good UX must also incorporate human emotion. This requires the uncanny ability to study, dissect and interpret what users feel in a way that is machine-learning friendly.
Without emotional intelligence (EI), an interface may work well but feel stale. Indeed, designers must cater to users’ emotions while tapping on the right emotional triggers to keep people engaged and create an impactful UX.
AI can both help and hinder these goals, so it’s important to understand the relationship between this technology and human emotion.
Where AI and Emotion Intersect in UX Design
Most people think of emotional intelligence as a human skill. While AI will never quite match a human’s ability to understand, relate to and respond to various emotions, it can help you implement it in UX design. Here’s how.
Sentiment Analysis
A good UX needs to consider an audience’s emotions, so understanding these feelings is the first step to EI-driven design. AI can help here through sentiment analysis. By analyzing comments, chatbot conversations and other language, AI can uncover how people feel about a topic, even when they don’t state it explicitly.
Because AI can detect subtle trends in vast amounts of data in minimal time, it’s an ideal tool for uncovering consumer sentiment. Some companies have used this kind of analysis to reduce cart abandonment by 12% and streamline site debugging timelines by a matter of days.
Emotion-Engaging Design
Emotional UX design also capitalizes on emotions to drive engagement. Just as AI provides insight into how users feel, it can also pinpoint which design cues may elicit desired emotions.
Designing for emotional engagement is tricky because seemingly small changes can have a big impact. Up to 90% of an impression about something can stem from color, for example. Machine learning models can identify these relationships and suggest ways to incorporate them into your UX, such as using bright colors to foster excitement and action.
Personalization
The best UXes go further and tailor the experience to individual users’ emotions. AI is indispensable here, too, as it can sort customers into predefined segments and adjust interactions with them accordingly to meet their wants and needs.
Accommodating each person’s unique situation leads to significant business results. AI-driven personalization has led to 17% increases in lead conversions in some contexts and shortens the time it takes to enact such customization. This level of user-specific change would be impossible in the same time frame without AI.
Challenges of Emotional Intelligence in UX Design
While AI can make it much easier to integrate EI into UX design, doing so introduces a few unique concerns. You should recognize these potential downsides before using AI this way to ensure your practices remain safe and effective.
Privacy Concerns
Sentiment analysis and AI-enabled personalization require collecting a considerable amount of user data. Consequently, they may threaten your audiences’ privacy. Given this concern, extensive cybersecurity measures and gaining informed consent before gathering any information are crucial.
Remember that data collection often falls under legal regulations, which vary widely by area. At least 19 states have enacted privacy laws, with seven new pieces of legislation passing in 2024 alone. These rules — and even similar ones in other countries — may affect you even if you operate in a different area as long as you have users in covered regions.
Manipulation
Using emotion to drive action can also raise questions of manipulation. Your public reputation can quickly sour if your audience feels you’re taking advantage of their feelings to sell something. As such, it’s important to keep your emotional UX choices in check to avoid pushing them too far.
This is one area where humans must have the final say instead of giving AI too much authority. It’s difficult to define what’s manipulative and what’s simply good marketing, but you can often recognize it when you see it. Have a diverse team of human experts review all design choices before taking them live, and never let AI models change anything beyond what this team has already approved.
Over-Reliance on AI
AI’s speed and convenience can lead to over-reliance on the technology. Despite high accuracy in many applications, AI is imperfect. Failure to monitor it and catch errors when they arise can lead to a snowball effect of missteps and ethical issues.
Up to 38.6% of the information in AI databases is biased, so letting AI respond to user data without close examination will likely lead to biased results. You can account for such risks by watching for signs of bias and other errors during training, ensuring a diverse team works on the model.
Ongoing review and audits of the algorithm will also help, as will ensuring that human experts always have the final say in any design choice or customer-affecting action.
AI-Driven UX Design Needs a Human Touch
Emotion plays a critical role in impactful UX design, but it’s important to balance AI efficiency with human intuition and feeling. That applies both to using AI to drive improvements and reining it in to avoid critical errors.
You can use machine learning to understand your users’ emotions and engage them accordingly. However, you must always add a human touch in the form of keeping automation in check to prevent bias, privacy breaches or other ethical problems. Attention to both sides will lead to the best results.
Eleanor Hecks is a design and marketing writer and researcher with a particular passion for CX topics. You can find her work as Editor in Chief of Designerly Magazine and as a writer for publications such as Clutch.co, Fast Company and Webdesigner Depot. Connect with her on LinkedIn or X to view her latest work.
