Emotion-Driven Innovation: An Inside-Out Approach to Design

In today’s rapidly changing world, the role of emotions in design has never been more important. Emotions are powerful drivers of human behaviour, and they can have a significant impact on our perception of products and services. This chapter highlights the characterising elements of Emotion-Driven Innovation (E-DI), a design approach that focuses on creating products and services that evoke positive emotions in users. E-DI is an inside-out process that starts with the designer’s own emotions. The designer then uses these emotions to generate ideas for products and services. E-DI differs from design thinking (DT), which is an outside-in process that starts with user needs. The Filter Game method is a pioneering method for aligning positive emotions with design aspirations. This method involves identifying the emotions that are most important to users and then designing products and services that will evoke those emotions that could be aligned with incremental or radical innovation principles. This chapter concludes with a qualitative analysis that connects the emotional jobs-to-be-done with award-winning products from the Red Dot Award 2023, identifying the emotional design factors that support the experience of specific emotions.