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Designing for Emotion

Aarron Walter
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Aarron Walter
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Workshop includes:

  • Snacks and drinks
  • Tea and Coffee
  • Lunch
  • Paper and pen/pencil

Full-day workshop • Thursday, November 12th
Feeling burned by repeated privacy breaches, manipulated by misleading information, and bullied by bad actors who alienate and abuse, customers come to our products these days with a range of complicated emotions. Now more than ever, we need to learn how to design for the complex emotions of our customers using foundational principles of design and psychology guided by sound ethics.


Get a fresh perspective on designing human experiences filled with emotions—good, bad, and all that’s between—in this workshop with Aarron Walter, author of the best selling book Designing for Emotion now in its second edition.

Aarron will show you how the best products and services use emotional design to create powerful moments in their customer journey, and he’ll share the principles of psychology that shape emotional engagement so you can apply them to your work too.

Aarron will also share how to design for diversity and inclusion to create a sense of belonging with all your customers. Not only is it the right thing to do, it can also help you reach more people and build lasting relationships with customers.

Aarron Walter has two decades of experience teaching at colleges in the US and Europe and speaking at conferences around the world. His workshops are filled with real-world examples and provide practical guidance you can put to work immediately.

In this workshop you’ll learn to:

  • Use principles of psychology to design memorable, emotionally engaging experiences
  • Use the power of research to understand the emotional experiences of your customers
  • Create well designed and well timed moments in your customer journey that transform perceptions of your brand and create real business value
  • Use the power of personality to shape a brand and product experience
  • Create powerful experiences by designing for diversity, equity, and inclusion
  • Talk to executives and partners outside the design team to communicate the value emotional design creates for a business

Who This Workshop is For

  • Designers at any level who want to learn how to go beyond creating usable interfaces to create memorable, emotionally engaging experience will find value in this workshop.
  • Entrepreneurs looking to create compelling products that beat competitors by delivering a superior user experience
  • Product managers/owners who want to better understand how design creates competitive advantage and value for a business

What hardware/software do you need?

All materials will be provided. You do not need to bring a laptop, but of course you can bring yours to take notes.

About Aarron Walter

As the VP of Design Education at InVision, Aarron Walter draws upon 15 years of experience running product teams and teaching design to help companies enact design best practices. Aarron founded the UX practice at MailChimp and helped grow the product from a few thousand users to more than 10 million. His design guidance has helped the White House, the US Department of State, and dozens of major corporations, startups and venture capitalist firms.

He is the author of the best selling book Designing for Emotion from A Book Apart. You'll find @aarron on Twitter sharing thoughts on design.

Time & Location

This full-day workshop will be hosted at Fort Mason and will take place the day after SmashingConf. The workshop will be running from 9:30 AM to 5:30 PM on Thursday, November 12th.

Schedule for Thursday, November 12th

9:00 AM – Doors open, Registration
9:30 AM – Introduction & Kick-off
11:00 AM – Coffee Break
1:00 PM – Lunch
2:00 PM – Afternoon Session
3:30 PM – Coffee Break
5:30 PM – The End

Save 100 USD when signing up for the conference and a workshop!