The ‘Get Emotional’ workshop provides an opportunity to gain insight and understanding into the emotional experiences people have with products, brands and design. You will learn from an interesting combination of scientific and practical knowledge of the emotional experiences that are offered by existing products and brands. You will learn about the fundamentals of emotions and how these relate to products, brands and design.

The scope of emotional experiences is very wide and so too the application of this workshop. By discovering that great relationships start with understanding - including relationships with products, brands and designs - you can learn how to create optimized emotional experiences. And you will discover how powerfully your creations can impact on the emotional experiences of people.

Audience

This workshop is for anyone working within the field of design and who is interested in using emotion as a leading factor in their customers’ experience. This workshop is also for any organization that is sensitive to the importance that design plays within customers’ experience, particularly it is of interest for anyone wishing to analyze the current ‘emotional status’ of their existing designs.

This workshop is also suitable for design academies who want their students to be introduced to the latest insights in experience design.

Format

The format of this workshop creates a balance between theory and practice, where hands-on experiences are mixed with bite-size piece of information. Specifically, the format of the workshop will be tailored to the specific needs of your organization.

The core of all of the theory and exercises lies in what we define as the three steps towards designing for emotion:

1. Understanding the emotional experience of products, brands and services.
2. Researching the emotional impact of your creation(s).
3. Incorporating emotion in the design process.

Tailor made

Before we begin our workshop we will start with an intake meeting where we will consult with you over your specific and current needs within the organization. After which we will create a tailor made workshop based on those specific needs.

Facilitators

Marco van Hout, Monito Design & Internet, and Paul Hughes, Lava, facilitate this workshop. Their combined experience offers a wide scope of experience and knowledge in the fields of products, branding, and design.

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Marco van Hout holds a Masters degree in communication sciences and specialized in the emotional effects of interacting with interactive products.

He publishes articles and interviews with experts and designers on his website www.Design-Emotion.com and is an active member of the Design & Emotion Society where he is responsible for the promotion of the Engage project (a European funded action that is bringing together industry, research and design to form a knowledge community and gather and evaluate tools to design for emotion).

Marco is based in Enschede and is a founding and managing partner of Monito design & internet, a creative and innovative organisation that offers advice, design and implementation of corporate and experience design and internet applications for local government, research institutions, and companies.

He has given presentations on the topic of experience design and design for emotion both in The Netherlands, as internationally.
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Paul Hughes left the rolling green hills of his native Ireland, shortly after competing his studies in Visual Communication, and arrived in the distinctive flat planes of the Netherlands, where he has used design to build brands and storytelling to keep brands alive for the last 10 years.

Currently, he is based in Amsterdam where he is a creative director of Lava graphic studios and is also a creative consultant to Design Machine, New York.

Additionally, Hughes has held visiting lectureships at a variety of institutes in the United States and Europe, including: School of Visual Arts New York, Parsons School of Design New York, New York University, The Fashion Institute of New York, University of Arts Vilnius (Lithuania), The National College of Art and Design Dublin (Ireland), Hojer College of Visual Communication (Denmark), Hallo Academy Amsterdam, Willem De Kooning Academy Rotterdam, and Eindhoven Design Academy.

Would you like to ‘Get Emotional’ with us?

When you are interested in learning more about this workshop and when you would like us to facilitate this workshop within your organization, please contact us by sending Marco van Hout an email:

marco [at] www.design-emotion.com

Photos by Tobias Groenland - courtesy of Monito