Terms like ‘digital’, ‘user-centric’ and ‘design thinking’ are as ubiquitous as they are misunderstood. They are used frequently in the business and innovation spheres, with little thought to what the practices actually entail — or how to achieve the outcomes for clients and customers that they promise. This book provides excellent examples and case studies demonstrating what works, and the way to apply this to your future endeavours. It goes back to basics so that practitioners have an easily digestible guide to truly enacting the age-old adage, putting the customer first.

— Jade Demnar, Change Management Consultant, Accenture

The explosion of digital channels and the proliferation of customer data points has created opportunity and challenge in equal measure for many marketers and business leaders. The holy trinity of relevance (what, why, when) has been exponentially complicated by the addition of many ‘hows’ (channels) and the need for hyper-personalisation at scale. In all of this complexity the primary goal of the marketer often gets left behind. This book provides an excellent reminder that engagement without emotional response is pointless; that as marketers and business leaders we need to constantly remind ourselves that it’s our customer’s emotions that drive response triggers that result in revenue, affinity, loyalty and amplification. In this increasingly complex world this book illustrates perfectly that we must not tempted by shiny objects and channel trends and stay focused on designing engagement programmes with the customer at the centre.

— Lee Hawksley, Senior Vice President, APAC, Salesforce.com

For companies seeking a winning strategy in the digital age, Wrigley and Straker lay out a masterful plan and business case to move beyond customer design to a responsive experience that understands and adapts to customer emotion to create a meaningful connection with brands.

— Trent Lund, Head of lnnovation and Ventures, PwC

Wrigley and Straker provide a compelling framing of customers’ ever-growing demands and complexities provoked through the rise of technology and the compounded impact for businesses needing to re-imagine their products, services and business models to remain relevant. Affected beautifully balances theory, application and case studies to demonstrate a new approach to business innovation.

— Sophie Tobin, Strategic Design Director, BCG Digital Ventures

Back in 2005 when I was Head of Marketing Research and Strategy at Philips, we worked on developing products that made sense to people. That is how the Philips slogan ‘Sense and Simplicity’ came about. Now the slogan is ‘Innovation and You’. Innovation is geared towards addressing the emotional needs of users and buyers of products and services. This book presents an innovative and well-researched approach to designing emotional channel engagements and provides a practical path from design innovation ‘wow’ to design innovation ‘how’.

The authors make the point that most companies do not know how to select the right types of channels to reach their audiences. They do not operate well strategically. More particularly, most companies do not really understand at a deeper level the motivations of the users and buyers of their products and are therefore incapable of creating meaningful engagements and loyalty in the new landscape. The authors propose the Digital Affect Framework and offer a typology of digital channels to better equip companies to emotionally engage their customers.

It is often difficult to write a book about such a fast-moving subject. However, Wrigley and Straker provide a practical new approach to design innovation. Their Digital Affect Framework enables customers’ latent needs to be addressed through the use of design thinking. All managers who run firms, as well as those responsible for strategic communications that want to compete on value rather than marketing, should familiarise themselves with this approach. This book sets out to accelerate this effort through the Digital Affect Framework, detailed case studies and the key lessons learnt from them, providing and encouraging collaboration for this growing field in design.

Professor Cees de Bont

Dean of the School of Design

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Associate Professor Cara Wrigley and Dr Karla Straker both reside in the Design Lab — an interdisciplinary research group within the School of Architecture, Design and Planning at The University of Sydney, Australia. They are traditionally trained industrial designers who actively research the value of design in business — specifically through business model strategies that lead to emotive customer engagements.

Prior to their current appointment they spanned faculty appointments in Design, Business, Engineering and Information Technology — emerging in a newly formed discipline, the nexus of design and innovation. Building on solid practical industry experience and combining this with scholarly understanding of emotional design, they have developed a unique insight into innovation in both industry and academia. Through copious industry projects, their work has crossed many disciplinary boundaries and appears in a wide range of high-quality research publications.

This book was built on friendship — a friendship that started more than a decade ago in a classroom. From our beginnings as the keen, green lecturer and the dedicated student, we have worked together ever since — today as colleagues. Nicknaming ourselves ‘Team Foxtail’, we were at times forced to downplay our hybrid research to not upset the product-centric discipline in which we once resided.

The nickname comes from British philosopher Isaiah Berlin’s parable of the Hedgehog and the Fox. Inspired by Greek poet Archilochus’s statement that ‘the Fox knows many things, but the Hedgehog knows one big thing.’ Berlin stated that people fall into two categories: Hedgehogs, who view the world through a single defining idea, and Foxes, who draw upon wide experiences, and for whom the world is not black and white. The strength of the Hedgehog is his focus on a singular, central vision; the strength of the Fox is his flexibility and openness to complexity. The Hedgehog never wavers or doubts; the Fox is more cautious and more pragmatic.

This concept is a great way to illustrate the problems in business today, where what leaders think matters far less than how they think. Hedgehogs stay focused and disciplined, and there is no doubt that in the past this has led to success in business. However, Hedgehogs’ tendency to ignore what is going on around them can mean that any long-term advantage crumbles. We need more Foxes to lead organisations. Complex thinkers can see game changers in the marketplace that have the power to wipe out competitors overnight. To succeed in this disruptive world, businesses cannot afford to be parochial.

Our salvation, the Fox approach, lies with engaging customers on an emotional level to carefully craft digital relationships online — creating digital affect. Affect is the consumer’s psychological response to the design and message of a product, service or system (and, more specifically in this book, digital channel). Design is now considered essential to creating and capturing new value through better understanding customers and their emotional needs. Engaging interactions via digital technology earn a customer’s trust and emotional investment. However, little is known about emotional design in the impersonal, virtual world in which we now live.

This book was motivated by the constant shift in technology trends, customer demands and increasing global competition that require companies to rethink ways to gain a sustainable competitive advantage. It responds to the increasing need to understand how technology can be used to engage with customers, and takes advantage of the exponential growth of data availability and growing capacity of digital technology to inform and direct strategic decisions. This book addresses the changing cultural, emotional and personal landscape that affects each of us within the business strategy context.

The book is organised into three parts: part I is about the customer, part II is about the company and part III is about the strategy that joins them. Chapter 1 introduces the state of flux businesses are in today and explains the what, why and how of affect from a customer perspective. Chapter 2 details the theories, concepts and importance of understanding emotions and customer relationships. Chapter 3 explains what a digital stimulus is, categorising them into typologies and touchpoints, explaining the complexity of multichannel design and the importance of digital channel consistency. Chapter 4 provides insight into how businesses can compete in a digital world. The final part of this book brings customer and company together, detailing the successful implementation of designing (chapter 5) and managing (chapter 6) an emotional strategy.

There are also three detailed empirical case studies (about the artist Cj Hendry, British brand Burberry and Brisbane Airport) that can be read at any time. As few readers attack a book from cover to cover in one sitting (unless you are perhaps stuck on a plane for a long-haul flight), we have designed the book to be read one chapter at a time.

Throughout these chapters, a variety of examples are used to illustrate success stories but also to highlight mistakes made along the way, and we share ways to overcome them using the perspectives of the Fox and the Hedgehog.

While there is considerable interest in digital channels, there is a limited understanding of their strategic use when engaging with customers. This book, based on more than a decade of research, industry projects and academic articles on this topic, provides a process that will allow your company to sense, learn, respond and adapt your position within an evolving environment — becoming affected.

Despite nearly 150 years of research on emotion, there is still much to learn and in the age of digital disruption, Foxes don’t quit!