Emotional Design and User Experience on Digital Platforms

Digital platforms are not limited to providing information or enabling content sharing, but also have become complex structures that aim to develop a multidimensional interaction with users. In this transformation process, user experience (UX) design and emotional design play an active role. While user experience design enables users to interact more efficiently with digital platforms by optimizing elements such as accessibility, usability, functionality and speed, emotional design focuses on building a stronger user bond by taking into account the aesthetic, psychological and social needs of individuals. Visual aesthetic elements, personalized content presentations, social feedback mechanisms and interactive features on digital platforms allow users to express themselves, satisfy their need for approval and establish a deep emotional bond with the platform. Digital platforms such as Instagram, TikTok and Netflix effectively combine user experience and emotional design elements by making the user experience with technical and as well as on an emotional level. Through intuitive interfaces, algorithmic content recommendations, personalisation strategies and features that encourage emotional engagement, the relationship that users establish with the platforms deepens and becomes a multidimensional experience. This holistic approach contributes significantly to the increase in user loyalty, satisfaction and interaction on digital platforms. This study examines Instagram, TikTok and Netflix platforms, which have become globally successful brands by adopting a user experience-focused approach within the framework of Donald Norman’s emotional design theory. In this context, the adoption of these platforms by large user bases and their global acceptance show that the user-centered design infrastructure plays a decisive role to a large extent.

Keywords: Emotional Design, User Experience Design, Digital Platform