January 24, 2007: A new book “Designing Emotions in Online Travel” (ISBN: 9-0902-1413-5, Sotopia.com), by Soraia Cardoso and René Vaartjes, provides new insights on how to arouse positive emotions at travel websites by using specific graphic elements, colours and online functions to ultimately increase online bookings.
Not only deficiencies in web usability but highly in emotional persuasion ability are impacting the end user satisfaction and bottom line costs for both travel companies as well as tourism destinations. In a world where capitalism is king we tend to look for meaningful sensorial experiences, things worth to remember rather than pursuing.
Developing a design toolkit to enable designers to design for emotion is the central issue of the book “Designing Emotions in Online Travel”. The information gathered from online surveys and 200 in depth one-to-one interviews in “Designing Emotions in Online Travel” take us on a journey through the emotional stages of people while booking a holiday online.
These findings provide great insight on what people find important when searching for a holiday destination. It turns out that facts and figures are not enough. They want to get emotional; they want a journey through the senses. Tickling one’s imagination through visuals, colours, and engaging functionalities is the key to designing for emotions. The secret is when and how in the booking process this should be done. This book promises to remind us the importance of the preliminaries.
