Creating a digital personality the user can relate to

For the user, a human, to step into an emotional relationship with another human, brand, or technology the user must relate to the other party on the same level. People are mostly attracted to other people based on their values and personality. Someone with a good sense of humor makes people laugh and tends to be a popular person to be around. In the same way, someone with a nurturing personality that always makes sure the people in their presence are well fed and comfortable reinforces trust. Personality traits express emotions and fortify meaningful interactions with other people.
Just like some personality traits that you have control over and others you don’t, in the same way you don't always have control over how your design's personality might be accepted by a user. For example, if the website design's main color is yellow (because this is the brand's color), there's nothing you can do when a user who is not fond of yellow perceives the design negatively. In another instance the user may not like horses, but the brand has a horse element incorporated in the logo and this element is thus reinforced throughout the website design. The use of this visual element might have a negative impact on building an emotional connection with the user, but again this is out of the designer's power.

Even though you cannot control every emotional cue with the user, you can focus on the elements that you can control. In his book, Emotional Design: Why we love (or hate) everyday things, Don Norman explains the three levels of visual design and how they can be incorporated with emotional cues to build products that are not just beautiful and functional, but that interact with the user on an emotional level:

• Visceral design: Relates to the user's intuitive reaction to a design based on basic biological preferences. This reaction is an inborn notion that comes from spontaneous human decision-making with an immediate emotional response. Visceral design impacts the way the user reacts and feels when looking at a design for the first time.
• Behavioral design: Relates to the user's functional approach to a design based on usability. The way the user uses a piece of functionality on a website, effortlessly or with frustration, taps into the the behavior design. Functionality comes first.
• Reflective design: Relates to the user’s referential connection to a design based on association, be it cultural or through personal experience. The user's background and personal perception of concepts will influence the way a design is perceived and how the user feels afterwards.

The success of a website can be awarded to the perfect balance of these three levels of design; one is not superior to the other and they cannot function independently. Every website triggers a visceral reaction through first impressions of the design, the behavioral interaction supports the usability and functional use of the website, and the reflective attribute reinforces the entire experience with the user's personal emotional connection with the website.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Human Needs is a motivational theory in psychology invented by Abraham Maslow in 1943 to explain the way humans are motivated by their needs. Maslow theorized that the most basic physiological needs, such as physical requirements for human survival like food and water, must be satisfied first before a person can go onto fulfilling the next level of need, which is safety and security. The fulfillment of needs build up from the bottom of the 5-tier model as shown in the following figure. The same principle of Maslow's Hierarchy of Human Needs is applied to Aaron Walter's Hierarchy of Emotional Design. According to Walter, a digital product's design must be functional first, before it can be reliable or usable, and most products are missing the top tier of pleasure because the user’s basic needs are not satisfied.

Humans build trust and emotional connection through feedback, the interaction of one person doing or saying something and the second person responding to it in a positive manner. This back-and-forth interaction creates trust; a negative feedback loop will break down trust and ultimately the emotional connection too.

In the same way, the user interacts with a website, by browsing and reading or filling in an online form and if the website responds with positive stimuli such as easy navigation to access all of the content or a user-friendly online form with clear fields, the emotional connection is strengthened. By repeating this process, a strong emotional connection can be built with the user.