The next wave of the information age is about designing for persuasion, emotion, and trust (PET design™).
You still need good usability if people can't find something they can't be persuaded by it but soon usability will no longer be the key differentiator it has been. It's often not enough to design a website that is easy to navigate, understand, and transact on. Just because people can do something doesn't ensure that they will.
The future of design is about creating engagement and commitment to meet measurable business goals. Whether your site is e-commerce, informational, or transactional, you must motivate people to make decisions that lead to conversion. This could be getting people to:
* buy a product
* sign-up for a newsletter
* donate to a cause
* ask their doctor about a drug
* vote for a candidate
* invest in your company
The interactive online environment offers far more opportunities to influence decision making than traditional advertising or marketing channels. Yet understanding people's subtle emotional triggers requires a rigorous set of new techniques, the results of which can even conflict with classic usability best practices.
