Category: Visual Storytelling

Think of the last website you’ve frequented. Did you freely decide where to look first, or did the design of the website help make your decision for you?

Designers have been utilizing behavioral economics, which is the study of human decision-making, to create websites that lead users to their desired outcomes.

Design influences behavior by reducing the mental effort required to understand information, directing attention, and making certain actions feel more natural or appealing. This is done through the utilization of 5 behavioral economic principles for designers; let’s take a look at how each one affects users and their benefits.

Anchoring

Every Christmas I create the gifts that I give to my friends and family. One of my most requested gifts is winter scarves. Seeing that we are entering October, I thought it would be a great head start to order my yarn to complete my Christmas projects.

I headed to Walmart’s website to see what is available. Original prices are shown crossed out with the current prices shown in green next to it. Star ratings and the number of reviews are shown below the yarn names support the quality of the yarn.

The original prices set a customer’s frame of reference; they immediately latch on to it. Once customers see that the price has decreased, it will make the product feel inexpensive in comparison to its original price. This is why it was important for designers to add the star ratings and reviews to disprove that the lowered price was in result of the product’s quality.

Businesses must ensure that they display correct pricing because once a customer anchors to a price, they will pay less than it but never more.

Defaulting

How interesting has it been, this world that holds every subscription imaginable being thrown at us by every company. Ellen Lupton described defaulting through the scenario of a customer making a choice between three different service plans will most likely choose the middle option. Defaulting explains that people often stick with an option that’s already selected because it reduces the effort they have to make in the decision process.

Grammarly presents 3 plans that a user can choose based on their individual needs. Under each plan name, there is a short description of what will be achieved using the plan. For their middle plan, they note that it is best for students and offers a free 10-day trial to try the plan before committing.

Listing all of the perks that come with each plan alienates the basic plan from the Pro and Enterprise plan. Two benefits for a plan is outnumbered by 8. The names of each plan also help the user decide what they want, all they have to know is whether they are in school or running a business, and the choice between the middle and right options is made.

Friction Costs

In Brideable’s article The Top 5 Behavioural Economics Principles for Designers it explained that reducing friction costs, which are little speed bumps that people hit when engaging with a service, will increase the likelihood of sales.

Amazon did this recently by its “1-click” feature, which uses previous user payment history to allow a user to bypass a shopping cart for purchases. All a user has to click is “buy now” and the order is made automatically. Another cool feature that Amazon added that reduces friction costs is making the option available for users to add an item to an already existing order (shown above). This also helps the user avoid creating a shopping cart, selecting a shipping and payment method, which ensures less opportunities for a customer to back out of a sale.

Ostrich Effect

The Ostrich Effect became a prominent term in the finance world in 2005, when Dan Galai and Orly Sade defined it as “the avoidance of apparently risky financial situations by pretending they do not exist”.

Ostrich’s website is a clever creation that tackles people’s avoidance of their financial information when they expect it to be negative. Instead of using shame to get users to change their financial behaviors, this website changes financial behaviors into approachable challenges.

The site uses names such as “Drop it Like It’s Hot” for eliminating unnecessary subscriptions, “Clear Your Cards” for paying off credit cards, and even “Sunday Scaries”, which encourages users to routinely review their finances. Users can earn points and badges, receive notifications, and complete check-ins as they progress.

This supports what I’ve learned regarding the experience economy being the most rewarding way to design. How a designer makes a user feel will determine that user’s behaviors, which is beneficial for businesses that want to ensure sales.

Social Proof

In the journal article A Room with a Viewpoint: Using Social Norms to Motivate Environmental Conservation in Hotels descriptive norms are defined to motivate both private and public actions by informing individuals of what is likely to be effective or adaptive behavior in that situation. The behavioral principle of social proof is that when uncertain, people often look at what other people are doing for guidance.

One major example of this principle is the website Yelp. People go on Yelp to leave reviews on establishments for other people to view and determine whether or not they want to go there themselves.

Any establishments that have high star ratings and a high number of positive reviews will attract more visits than an establishment with no ratings or reviews.

Conclusion

Designers who understand the benefits of behavioral economics will have greater success with making something visually appealing to users. Having insight into how people perceive information, where their attention travels, and how visual experiences can shape the decisions that follow puts them at a huge advantage.

Living in New England, there is a time of year when an open bedroom window either allows the night air to hang outside of it, bogged down with humidity. Or it will slip through the window and cool the room completely until the window is shut again. During this transition from summer to fall, we start to bring out light quilts, fuzzy comfortable home goods, and our favorite fall candles. 

For a long time, the brand I turned to for candles was Yankee Candle. They provided candles whose scent throw consistently permeated my living spaces. Their glass mason jars and colorful labels were aesthetically pleasing. Depending on the fragrance, Yankee Candle added value to my apartments each time I lit them. There is something about having a clean space, everything put away in its proper place, being tied together by a lit candle. 

But in 2015, Yankee Candle was bought out by Newell Brands for $13.2 billion. This change in ownership changed the focus from providing an enjoyable experience for customers to focusing on how to make the most money for less. Fragrance and skin care reviewer Drew Yauch explained in a July YouTube video analysis that the brand seemed to have lost its way over the past few years. “It’s been a little rough. Weird fragrances, weird, conceptual-type fragrances, weird labels. No strength and throw. The list goes on,” he said.

Experience Economy

Newell Brands’ mistake when they bought out Yankee Candle was redirecting their focus from the experience economy to profits. They did not consider that in the experience economy, consumers are not simply purchasing products; they are purchasing feelings, identities, memories, and experiences. In the experience economy, good design adds value because it determines not only how consumers interact with a product, but also how that product makes them feel.

According to authors B. Joseph Pine II and James H Gilmore, a new economic order was gripping affluent societies. The “experience economy” had overthrown the service economy of the 1950s and 60s, created when businesses like banks and insurance companies became more important than manufacturing(Lupton, 2017). 

These two authors looked further into why so many customers took to Starbucks coffee vs. corner store coffee. What was found was that when a person buys a service, he purchases a set of intangible activities carried out on his behalf. But when he buys an experience, he pays to spend time enjoying a series of memorable events that a company stages– as in a theatrical play– to engage him in an inherently personal way(Lupton, 2017). 

What designers must answer for customers to ensure successful sales is what experience they must create that will make future customers buy in due to how they feel. Ellen Lupton discussed in her book, Design Is Storytelling, that the success of a product lies not just in its basic utility but in its meaning in the lives of its users.

A Curated Customer Emotional Journey

Another mistake that Newell Brands made was that they did not tap into the customer’s desired experience that Yankee Candle already curated. Instead of putting the company’s wants above their customers’, they should have leaned on co-creation to continue what customers wanted while finding out areas of opportunity for new ventures. This could have been done by Newell Brands’ marketing team utilizing social media to take their customers’ temperatures through story or post polls. 

Since they were taking over an already established brand, they had a lot of data that they could have used to create customer personas. Taylor Dykes discussed in her article, Personas Make Users Memorable, that user-centered design means that designs are informed by user thoughts, behaviors, attitudes, needs, and goals. But that can be easier said than done when users feel like generic and undefined entities. Personas create a memorable representation of real users based on concrete research.

A deep dive into Yankee Candle social media platforms would have exposed the different personas, whether it’s a 30 yr woman in New England who loves candles in the fall after cleaning her apartment and accomplishing all her goals for the day. Or it is a persona for a 20 yr man in college who wants to cover up the recent parties he has thrown before he has company come over to his dorm. Making customers real through personas helps companies appeal to their customer base exactly as they want, which secures sales. 

Conclusion

The experience economy changes the designer’s job. Designers aren’t simply making objects attractive; they’re helping determine what people anticipate, notice, feel, remember, and associate with those objects. A product may satisfy a practical need, but design can transform that interaction into a story with a memory that would be continuously sought out by customers.

A few classmates and I decided to blow off some steam and play the game The Thing from the Future. We received cards that set the story’s arc, terrain, object, and mood. It was then up to us to create an object and explain how it worked in the future environment.

Act I — The Little Angel

For my first turn, I received these cards:
Arc — Transformation in which a profound historical event occurred
Terrain — Related to drones
Object — A device
Mood — Amusement

Julian Bleecker & Edwin Gardner explained that design fiction is used as a way to say the things that one imagines and that it might be seen as outrageous, or weird, or even “out of scope”. But unlike science fiction, design fiction operates somewhere between science fact and science fiction.

Currently, we are witnessing the growth of AI and augmented reality through our phones and VR devices. We believe we are in control of technology, but what happens when technology moves in the direction of making decisions for us while being responsible for enforcing those decisions? We’ve seen many fictional stories created to convey technology stealing us away from our humanity, but I wanted to explore the possibility of technology being used to keep us on track with our lives.

Little Angels are drones created by my fictional future’s government to ensure that its citizens did not slip into their augmented realities. These drones are tasked with supporting their humans through their various physical, mental, and emotional states. They serve as a guide throughout their human owner’s life as they intervene when humans turn to toxic behaviors.

Instead of asking, “what would happen if this existed”, Visual design takes the ideas created through design fiction and turns them into something people can see.

Act II— Future Postcards

On my second turn, I recieved these cards:
Arc — A future in which order is deliberately imposed
Terrain — Related to learning
Object — There is a postcard
Mood –Excitement

The “diegetic prototype,” according to Kirby (2010), is a design or object that exists in the fictional world and is created through “dialogue, plot rationalizations, character interactions and narrative structure” (p. 41). Reflecting the breadth of concepts prototyped in the associated fictional worlds, as well as the variety of formats and media employed in the creation of design fictions.

During the creation process of this game, I realized that design fiction does not require accurate predictions of what will happen. Designers can create objects that allow audiences to experience a hypothetical future and question the society surrounding those objects. Having future postcards dictate the direction of citizens’ lives gives my audience the opportunity to question whether life would be better if we were told what our best path would be? Connecting the future postcards with the little angels helps to build the feeling that this future society gives no option for citizens to be dysfunctional or unsuccessful. The question of whether or not someone would make it in that society begins to build tension.

Act III— The Statute of Resistance

Here are the cards that I recieved on my last turn:
Arc — A future where a profound historical evolution has occurred
Terrain — Related to disease
Object — There is a statue
Mood — Shame

Designers Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby created a speculative project called Not Here, Not Now. For their project, they created photographs of fictional interfaces and devices from that world. They explain that the interfaces function as portals into alternative societies. The objects reveal something about the values, norms, and assumptions of the worlds in which they exist.

The interesting thing about my try at this game was that each round of cards pertained to each other, so I ended up with an in-depth futuristic world. The little angels define the future government’s level of control over its citizens and its intentions with them. The future postcards deepened my audience’s understanding of how much control this futuristic government has and gave them its name: The Sentinels.

The Statute of Resistance answers the question of how The Sentinels handle citizens who are unwilling to obey them. My drawing of the statute also visually communicates an authoritative government through using wings, a pedestal, and a central eye.

Conclusion

Playing The Thing from the Future showed me that designing for the future comes down to us leaning into our imaginations. It also requires thinking about the world that technology would exist in and how it could affect the people who use it. I began my story with the Little Angels as helpful devices created to guide people away from unhealthy behaviors. However, as my fictional world developed, that guidance slowly became control. The Future Postcards removed uncertainty by telling citizens which direction their lives should take, while the Statue of Resistance revealed the consequences for those who chose not to follow that direction.

What started as a solution to a problem eventually created an entirely new problem that we currently face. Which is how much freedom are we willing to sacrifice for a society that promises to make our lives better?

Since the beginning of time, at the core of our human experience has been visuals. The oldest known cave paintings were made at least 64,000 years ago by Neanderthals in the Spanish caves of La Pasiega Maltravieso and Ardales (Little,2025). There are so many cave paintings that portray animals, people, and landscapes that we guess the stories only because we ourselves have not experienced nature as our ancestors have.

An interesting thought regarding cave paintings is whether their lack of current techniques prohibits our capacity to interpret them correctly. Visual storytelling is the combination of emotional reaction and narrative information. The colors, typography, style, balance, and format of an image will generate that first instinctive smile or frown, attracting or repelling the gaze for reasons we don’t fully understand (Losowsky).

Cave Painting

In this cave painting, we see many animals facing the same direction, looking back at us. They vary in size from Rhinos to armadillos, and they all hold a story that only their hunters and companions know. Taking all of these animals in invokes the feeling that the painter created the moments held between the humans and animals out in the wild. The animals were painted with neutral expressions, which makes the painting feel like homage to them. They serve as a reflection of life, what it takes to sustain it and the beings that make it possible. This painting was created through the non-dramatic technique; as its viewers look at the animals, we are to piece together the story.

Seeking New Grounds

It is interesting how adding more details to a painting helps us understand its context. Unlike the cave painting, this painting put humans and animals together. The wolf that is viewed at the bottom left corner, on its own, we would view as a wild animal. But seeing the wolf next to the humans and their horses, we can understand that this wolf has some level of loyalty to them. Being that it is a pack animal, it has acknowledged that the success of its survival is possible by having close proximity to these humans. All animals and humans are facing the same way, showing unity and that collectively they are all off seeking the same thing. Their horses are carrying their personal items and we see women and children, which makes this adventure seem as they are seeking a new place. The artist controlled the background by adding elements that enhanced the story being told (Gitner,2022). The sunrise in the background evokes the feelings of hope and possibility. The contrast of darker colors are used for the ground that they are leaving for greener pastures.

Rainy Day In Manhattan

Thousands of years later, we’ve moved away from nature to be closer to cities and tecnology. We all love Manhattan when the weather is beautiful, but when it rains, its landscape is completely changed. The outer appearance of large skyscrapers and buildings takes a mysterious tone as the colors are washed out by grey. The colors of the clothes of passersby are cloaked by rain jackets, the flowers on the outdoor carts are brought in, and the storefronts blend into the street sign lights. The dark shading and smudging of colors express how dark and dreary a rainy day in the city can be. The pops of color the artist used for the street and car lights are the only bits of relief from the gloom of this rainy day. We see the group huddled to the left that offers some bright blues, and they seem to be discussing the plans they made now that they’ve met up with each other. The group of people in black seem to have carried the weight of their days and are heading home. They’re hunched forward under their umbrellas, and since the direction they are facing is towards the edge of the painting, the painter communicates that they are not on the same adventure like our friend group to the left. The artist also utilized silhouette’s to communicate the wet grounds and shadows created by the rain. Though this tecnique should be used sparingly as it can be seen as cliche(Gitner,2022), this is an example of how it can add emotion to a visual.

Secret Library

The group to the right in the previous picture made me wonder where some of those people could be hurrying back to. During rainy days in the city, the mission is to run home or to our favorite comfort spots. What if this photo is the destination of one of the travelers?

The balance between light and dark in this photo invites us to this secret place. It’s organization and the health of the plants present tell us that someone comes regularly to care for this space. Although the mahogany is dark, the use of lighting speaks of its care; it is all polished, and dust is nowhere to be found. The cherry blossom peaking in through the ceiling has left no flowers on the ground, shelves, or couch for us to find. The artist also used the light to illuminate the book collection which reveals to me this was all brought together because of this caretaker’s love for learning. The artist used this interactive technique for us to find clues while we still remain in a state of mystery. The outside view only reveals more beautiful trees, there are no buildings or streets to tell us if it is out in the country or in a city. This picture invites us to steal away to our quiet place to spend time immersed in the things we love and hold close to our hearts.

Dispair

Visual storytelling is important because when our words fail us the use of visuals will always connect us just as music does. We have all experienced this moment in adult life, where all of our responsibilities, our fears, our struggles come in and surround us. There is a feeling of being overwhelmed by the darkness, which is portrayed by the black textured swirl surrounding the stick figure. What this stick figure is feeling speaks to us by how it is on the ground, and it is bent over, trying with its last bit of strength to hold itself up. The pop of red uses color therapy to communicate strong negative emotion amidst the darkness of the black textured swirl. The stick figure’s head points toward the swirl, which makes me believe all of this heaviness is being caused by its thoughts. The red space in the middle holds hope as the black textured swirl hasn’t completely consumed our stick figure.

Woman Immersed In Flowers

Moving away from our stick figure in despair, we see how a photo’s message can be changed by its color palette and surroundings. Instead of a black textured swirl, we see a woman surrounded in a field of daisies. She has on a light colored dress, and though we can not see her eyes, her smile conveys that in this moment she is experiencing happiness. Flowers have always been connected to the whimsical journey of being a woman. We see a woman who appears to be at peace with where she is currently in her life, there’s a feeling of acceptance as well. In this moment, everything is as it should be and her joy is her own. Now, if we viewed this woman with the same smile but instead she wore a black gown and was surrounded by a field of black roses, viewers would pick up on nefarious vibes. Feelings of danger would arise as something would feel off.

Person In Contemplation

Another important background choice that effects how a picture is perceived is whether it is set in the day or night. We see a person sitting down, facing away from us as the sunset is completed which reveals a full moon to us. We take the cue that this person is reflecting as we have assigned reflection to night. When the quiet of the day finds us, when everyone has gone to their homes to rest. Seeing someone taking in nature during this time leads us to believe they are processing their life and stole away to do so in peace. If this was located in a city scene, it would no longer be a pursuit of understanding or closure, it would be the beginning to a bout of avoidance.

Conclusion

Throughout history we have used photos to send messages to one another. Strong emotions can be stirred up just by a photo’s color palette, background details and focal points. The artist controls the viewer’s experience by the techniques they choose and by how the present context clues. As we continue to advance and develop new techniques it will be interesting to see how the art of visual storytelling progresses.