Emotions are Everything
I'm convinced that everything of value comes down to feelings.
When I was grappling with the value of design, my business coach introduced me to the Elements of Value Pyramid from Bain & Company. It's a tool that divides the fundamental elements of value into four levels of need: functional, emotional, life changing, and social impact. The more elements provided, the greater the customer's loyalty and the higher the company's sustained revenue.
Design lifts a functional commodity into the realm of emotions, increasing its worth exponentially.
Take office space for example. An overwhelming array of real estate meets the functional objectives of providing physical space for workers to meet, provide efficient IT services, ensure security and safety, streamline operations, and create a physical legitimacy for an organization. Logically, it's adequate and serves a purpose. But employees aren't motivated by it. They may even feel negatively about it, affcting their feelings towards the job.
Add thoughtful space design to the office and you get an atmosphere that engages people on an emotional basis — inspiring focus, collaboration, pride, and aspiration through color, form and texture, space flow, lighting and a myriad of architectural approaches. Bringing people together in a space they enjoy tells them they matter to the organization and have value beyond what they produce. It engenders loyalty and a sense of belonging — high elements on that Bain pyramid.
Behavioral economic theory further supports my insights. Daniel Kahneman's work on System 1 (fast, intuitive, emotional) and System 2 (slow, deliberate, logical) thinking shows how decisions are typically led by our emotions, followed by rational analysis. The power of emotions is evident in consumer behavior everywhere, from luxury brands to health care enrollment we base our decisions on how the choice feels. Even those who claim to make decisions primarily from logic do so because logic makes them feel good about themselves - more in control, more intelligent, more rational than the "emotional masses." Their commitment to logic itself has an emotional foundation.
This doesn't mean logic has no role — it's vital for implementation and verification — it's needed to play. But our values and what we ultimately care about are fundamentally emotional in nature.
When we strip away all the justifications and rationalizations, what remains is how something makes us feel. That stunning home with the view? It's not about square footage or property values — it's about the sense of awe you feel each morning looking out the window. That expensive coffee ritual? It's not about caffeine delivery — it's about the comfort and small pleasure in your daily routine.
As a designer, I've come to embrace that my true value lies not in technical skill alone, but in my ability to understand, anticipate, and deliver on the emotional needs of clients and users. When design succeeds, it's because it connects on a feeling level that transcends the merely functional.