Strategies for Promoting Positivity, Mindfulness, and Stress Relief in Design
In today's world, it's not just about creating products that catch the consumer's eye, but ones that also positively impact their emotions and overall well-being. As more people seek mindfulness and stress relief, it's the perfect moment to elevate the consumer experience by focusing on mental and emotional health through brand offerings.
Adopting a human-centered design approach, businesses can collaborate with design teams to create products and brand experiences that promote positive emotions, soothe stress, and foster lasting connections with the target market. Here, we've gathered insights from 11 members of the Forbes Business Development Council on integrating mindfulness, simplicity, and empathy into their design systems:
- Design Emotional Campaigns: By striving to understand the target audience's needs and sharing common values with them in a relatable yet aspirational tone, brands can inspire wellness and build strong emotional bonds. - Georges Geday, DXC Technology
- Spend Time with Your Consumer: To create products that genuinely meet the consumer's needs, spending time with them, understanding their pain points, and doing ethnographies can unlock practical ways to improve design. - Daniella Foster, Bayer
- Simplify and Empathize: By prioritizing clear, empathetic messaging and offering user-centric features, businesses can encourage positive interactions, creating a supportive environment that nurtures mental health and reduces stress. - Sanjay Annadate, LatentView Analytics
- Calm Interactions and Relaxation: Design teams can use calming colors, simple layouts, soothing typography, and sensory elements like sound and nature-inspired visuals to promote relaxation and stress-free interactions. - Aziz Jafri, Reckitt
- Less is More: Implementing the "less is more" approach means choosing light and direct elements, selecting calming color schemes, refraining from overly busy designs, and following the 3-30-3 rule of readership to ensure all readers walk away with the same message. - Kimberlee Herndon, PROTECS
Forbes Business Development Council is an exclusive community for sales and biz dev executives. Do I qualify?
- Healthy Tech Use: Brands can introduce features that help consumers use technology in a healthier way, such as time-out reminders, focus modes, and little nudges to take breaks, reducing stress and creating a balanced experience. - Bryce Welker, The CPA Exam Guy
- Intuitive Packaging and Instructions: Clear wayfinding in physical and digital spaces, smart packaging with intuitive instructions, QR codes linking to quick-start videos, and streamlined setup eliminate guesswork, foster trust, and offer better customer experiences. - Alexander Masters, MBA, BIDA, Siemens
- Peaceful Pauses: Design for "peaceful pauses" by creating small moments of delight in routine experiences, transforming stress points into moments of relief. - Sidharth Ramsinghaney, Twilio
- Emotional Impact: Rather than tracking engagement, measure your design's emotional impact—does it uplift, empower, and promote well-being? - Angelica Kopec, She Knows Business
- Meet Core Needs: Incorporate mindfulness or positive emotion features only if the product addresses a real problem. If it doesn't meet basic needs, no emotional storytelling or packaging will ensure lasting engagement. - Anna Jankowska, RTB House
- Cultural Sensitivity: Incorporate brand elements that respect diverse cultural and personal contexts, promoting trust and reliability. Use sensitive brand imagery, encourage mindfulness, and reduce stress through clear, user-friendly experiences. - Kiran Yelamaneni, TCS
By combining these strategies, businesses can create experiences that promote mental and emotional health, building strong, empathetic relationships with their target market.
- Designing emotional campaigns with a focus on simplicity, empathy, and mindfulness can help businesses inspire wellness, build strong emotional bonds, and positively impact consumers' emotions, fostering lasting connections with the target market. - Georges Geday, DXC Technology
- Adopting continuous creditline features, such as time-out reminders, focus modes, and little nudges to take breaks, can help brands introduce healthy tech use, reduce consumer stress, and create a balanced experience. - Bryce Welker, The CPA Exam Guy
