similarity in bodily structure and mental disposition of all the a cute mascot to create connections with their

races of mankind. audience?We humans are complex beings, and can be

What Darwin suggests is that we have a common emotional difficult to design
lexicon guiding us through life. We don’t develop emotions for. We all have distinct personalities, emotional baggage,
after birth by watching others. We’re born ready to express and unique
pain, joy, surprise, anger, and other emotions. Emotion is dispositions, so how can we design something that can
an appeal to such
essential survival tool. It’s how we communicate our needs wide-ranging perspectives?
to our caregivers, and later in life, it’s how we build Beneath disparate personalities and perspectives lie
beneficial universal
relationships. Though we develop verbal language as we psychology principles common to all humans. These
mature, principles are
emotion is our native tongue from the moment we enter invaluable tools in our quest to design for emotion. In this
this world. It is the lingua franca of humanity. chapter,
HUMAN NATURE AND DESIGN: BABY-FACE we’ll explore the psychological firmware we share and
establish a
BIAS foundation on which we can build emotional design
We can learn a lot about design and how to communicate strategies.
effectively with our audience by studying evolutionary THAT WHICH UNITES US
psychology.
If there is one trait common to all humans, it is that we all
As humans have evolved physically, so too have our
emote.
brains, to naturally select the most advantageous instincts
In The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animal,
and behaviors that will keep our species alive. We call
Charles Darwin
these
observed
instincts “human nature.” They’re the Rosetta Stone that
The same state of mind is expressed throughout the world
offers
with remarkable
insight into why we behave the way we do. Let’s look at
uniformity; and this fact is in itself interesting as evidence of
a familiar instinct and see how it may inform our design
work. the close
Parents love their babies. If you’re not a parent, you might
wonder why people would want to subject themselves to
sleepless nights, poopy diapers, and constant caregiving
while
relinquishing the freedoms and delights of adulthood. On
paper, it sounds pretty bad. But in reality, it’s pure magic
for
reasons that are hard to explain.
Shortly before I began writing this book, I became a parent.
Holy cow, is it hard work! But when I see my son’s face,
I forget that I’m running on three hours of sleep, and that
his
pants are filled with unspeakables. All I see is pure beauty
that
is totally worth it.
Evolution has given us baby goggles that help us look past
such shortcomings and trigger waves of positive emotions
when we see a little one’s face. The proportions of a baby’s
face—large eyes, small nose, pronounced forehead—are a
pattern
our brains recognize as very special. Faces that have
suchlovable. We’re hard wired to love babies.
I know it sounds kind of crazy, but scientists believe that
the original reason we evolved to love baby faces is so that
we
wouldn’t kill them. Cuteness is a baby’s first line of defense.
As the late evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould
explains
in his essay A Biological Homage to Mickey Mouse,
cartoonists
have exploited this principle for decades, creating
characters
with large heads, small bodies, and enlarged eyes that
endear
them to us.
Designers also use this principle, called the baby-face bias,
to their advantage. Can you think of any websites that use