What Brat Summer Can Teach Us About Emotional Design

By Ana Shulvela (she/they)

What is Brat?

If you haven’t been completely out of the loop, you’re likely well aware of the cultural phenomenon that is Brat. However, on the off chance that you’re reading this wide-eyed and confused, let me introduce you. Charlie XCX’s sixth studio album, Brat, dominated the airwaves, social media feeds, and cultural ethos of the summer, firmly establishing itself as a defining phenomenon of 2024. Nestled amongst other viral sensations like Moo Deng, Thailand's beloved newborn pygmy hippo with a penchant for violence, and Raygun, the Australian breakdancer who shocked audiences at the Olympics, Brat transcended its identity as just music. It became a cultural force, shaping an aesthetic, a mindset, and an ethos.

Urging listeners to embrace all that is messy, chaotic, and authentic, Brat achieved a rare feat: it turned a product into a cultural movement. Through its use of cohesive storytelling, evocation of nostalgic aesthetics, and a bold, readily recognizable palette- Brat is a masterclass in what it means to create an immersive world for users to step into. As designers, we can draw many lessons from this phenomenon, especially in its strategic use of emotional design.

Don Norman and Emotional Design

So, is there a way for us as designers, to take the lessons of Brat and apply them to the world of UX design? In my opinion – absolutely. From a design and marketing perspective, Brat illustrates the power of familiarity, relatability, and cultural timing. By capitalizing on nostalgia, the album was able to be both innovative, as well as offer fans a feeling that felt fresh and culturally relevant. As Brat leveraged nostalgic and stripped-down design elements to create a strong emotional connection with its audience, it tapped into emotional design. As defined by the Interaction Design Foundation, emotional design is “the concept of how to create designs that evoke emotions which result in positive user experiences,” or as Don Norman famously stated, “everything has a personality: everything sends an emotional signal. Even where this was not the intention of the designer, the people who view the website infer personalities and experience emotions” (Interaction Design Foundation, n.d.; Norman, 2013, p. 39). When designing products, either newly minted or wholly established, it is important to consider the emotional relationships you are allowing the user to cultivate through your design.

Norman identifies three levels at which emotional design operates:

Visceral: A user's initial, instinctive reaction to a design – this is often influenced by aesthetics.
Behavioral: The experience of using the product, highlighting the product's usability and functionality.
Reflective: The deep, long-term emotional connection and personal meaning that users attach to a product.

Translating Brat to UX Design

At the visceral level, Brat packed a punch with its neon green aesthetic, grainy typography, and nostalgia-driven graphics. In UX terms, this is the equivalent of creating interfaces with strong first impressions—beautiful, intuitive, aligned with user expectations, and sometimes surprisingly delightful. According to Norman, "it is not enough to build products that work and are understandable and usable. We also need to build products that bring joy and excitement, pleasure and fun, and beauty to people's lives” (Norman, 2004, p. 5). Here, it is important to consider that emotionally conscious design should follow a deliberate and planned approach – leveraging user research to best understand who the audience is, and how visual elements can be incorporated to allow for maximum meaning and impact. Here, your designs should work to align with user expectations – visual elements should be contextually relevant and intuitive – and finally, visual hierarchy should be intuitive, as designers work to direct a user's attention to where it matters using appropriate font size, contrast, and spacing.

On the behavioral level, usability is king. Whether it's a music album or an app, users must find joy in the process of interaction, and in order to find joy, they must be able to accomplish whatever jobs they seek out to complete. In his article about emotional design, Tarun Kohli argues that behavioral elements appear when users find pleasure in what they’re doing based on the usability and effectiveness of use of the product (Kohli, 2019). Nielsen Norman’s 10 usability heuristics for user interface design are an excellent framework that both new and seasoned designers can follow in order to design for usability (Nielsen, 1994).

Finally, after engaging with any sort of digital tool, users generally judge the experience, performance, and benefits of the interaction, using it as a framework to consider whether or not they would like to continue use or forgo future exchanges. This speaks to the reflective component of emotional design. Don Norman states that in order to design for reflective elements, the interface should go beyond immediate functionality and aesthetics to resonate with users on a deeper level (Norman, 2004). One such way that this can be achieved is through the use of narrative. Brat utilized a

strong narrative voice to captivate and hook its audience, creating a sense of meaning and community amongst fans.

A Quick Case Study

An excellent example of a digital product that effectively leverages a strong narrative voice and brand identity is Duolingo. Duo’s personality is designed in a manner that allows them to shine as a helpful, friendly, and sometimes sassy guide. (And let’s not forget that his green feathers are eerily reminiscent of Brat green – a coincidence? I think not!)

As a society, it’s time we admit that Duo is Brat. Their personality isn’t static – but rather, it evolves and emerges through various touch points and user interactions. Whether it's a push notification that reveals a bit of encouragement, or a cheeky reminder to complete daily practice, Duo is there to not only encourage user engagement, but to create an emotional relationship with the user base. As Duo builds relationships with users through repeated exposure (Am I being bullied? Flirted with? Motivated? Antagonized?) Their design comes to embody much more than just a strategic interaction – it creates a communal reference point that other users can speak to, lending itself to the creation of a community.

The relationship that Duo develops with users over repeated exposure, reminders, and notifications serves to create the foundation of a reflective user experience. UX designers can channel Brat, and Duo, by designing for reflective moments that leverage personalization, community features, and meaningful narratives.

Experience and its Importance

Oftentimes, when we think about UX design, visions of user flow charts, wireframes, and many rounds of research immediately come to mind. However, it is important to not neglect the experience portion of the definition, which hones in on the emotional design elements that drive user actions, motivations, and cognition, and form the core of our relationship to a product. In his book Experience Design: Technology for All the Right Reasons, Marc Hassenzahl defines and explores ‘experience’ in order to illustrate how technology can mediate and shape the experiences we have with the world at large (Hassenzahl, 2010). He emphasizes the importance of emotions in ‘experience,’ explaining how they are indelibly intertwined with user cognition and motivation, and therefore should be leveraged in the design of products. According to Marc, experiences comprise an interlaced blend of emotions, thoughts, actions, and motivations – which technology acts to bridge (Hassenzahl, 2010).

If we return to Brat, we can plainly see how the album came to embody an utterly full experience, in that it gave shape and meaning to users' emotions, thoughts, actions

and motivations through its use of emotional resonance and thought-provoking lyricism (Hassenzahl, 2010). One way that designers can create more emotionally engaging experiences that emulate Brat is by following a holistic design approach. Marc defines ‘holistic design’ as a way of focusing on “be-goals” – which are values such as connection and competence – rather than simply designing products that meet functional ends, or “do-goals” (Hassenzahl, 2010). By adopting a holistic design framework, designers can address the diverse and interconnected aspects of user needs and motivations—ranging from emotional to technical. This approach enables the creation of products that resonate with the complex nuances of human experience, ultimately offering users more evocative and meaningful interactions.

Conclusion

In many ways, Brat demonstrates the transformative power of emotional design. By weaving together visceral, behavioral, and reflective elements, Brat was able to alchemize a product into a cultural movement. These same principles can be applied to the world of UX design, and even EdTech, where creating immersive, emotionally engaging experiences can transform how users learn and interact with technology. “Are you bumpin’ that?” (XCX, 2024).

References

Baker, J. (2019). The art of emotion — Norman’s 3 levels of emotional design [Image]. Medium.

https://medium.muz.li/the-art-of-emotion-normans-3-levels-of-emotional-desig n-88a1fb495b1d

Bliss Applications. (n.d.). Unveiling the power of emotional design in Bliss Applications. LinkedIn. Retrieved November 22, 2024, from

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/unveiling-power-emotional-design-bliss-applic ations-h7jkf/

Hassenzahl, M. (2010). Experience design: Technology for all the right reasons. Morgan & Claypool Publishers.

https://doi.org/10.2200/S00261ED1V01Y201003HCI008

Interaction Design Foundation - IxDF. (2016, June 3). What is Emotional Design (ED)?. Interaction Design Foundation - IxDF.

https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/emotional-design

Kohli, T. (2019, November 25). The why and how of emotional design. UX Planet. https://uxplanet.org/the-why-and-how-of-emotional-design-3a51d56b84a1

Lyko, D. (2024, May 20). Power of emotional design: The secret to user engagement. UX Planet.

https://uxplanet.org/power-of-emotional-design-the-secret-to-user-engagement -909397afc83e

Nielsen, J. (1994, April 24). 10 usability heuristics for user interface design. Nielsen Norman Group. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/

Norman, D. A. (2013). The design of everyday things (Revised and expanded edition). Basic Books.

XCX, C. (2024). 365 [Song]. On Brat [Album]. Atlantic Records.