How Illustration Adds Emotion To UX

Angela Huang
5 min readSep 7, 2022

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Designers have been using illustrations in their UX designs to add emotion and influence what users feel. This is a great way to communicate feelings with people using your product and make them think what you want them to.

If you haven’t used emotions in your user experience designs, we can help you change that. This article will look at how illustrations in UX add emotions to the web design and the benefits of doing this.

Source: Undraw

What Are The Benefits Of Using Illustration In Your UX Design

Illustrations have plenty of benefits, and you will see positive results by using them in your designs. If you need a better way to communicate emotions and change the tone of your content, then using illustrations is what your UX needs.

You can use different illustrations, and choosing the correct type will improve your content and help you get the desired results if you don’t know what kind of illustrations you need for your UX, hire UX/UI design companies to help you pick the right ones.

Don’t mistake illustrations for icons. Icons are simple and lack the complexity that illustrations bring to the UX of products. Influencing the user’s emotions with icons is going to be complicated or not possible, but a well-placed digital illustration can make it easy. You need to ensure you don’t go overboard; only use the illustrations you need.

Illustration by Marina Mogulska from Ouch!

1. People Recognize Illustrations Faster

Illustrations will help keep the user’s attention and cause them to engage more with your product and everything it offers. It can be hard to communicate the right emotions using words, but using the right images in the right location will give you better results and help your UX see more success.

People don’t like to be shown too much text; if you do this, they might leave your website before they even use it. Keep the text short and only discuss what’s important to the user. Everything else can be removed or simplified.

Illustration by Icons 8 from Ouch!
Illustration by Icons 8 from Ouch!

2. Build Your Brand Identity

Branding is essential, and if you want your brand to be remembered, you need to create a successful brand identity that people find memorable and exciting. People need to recognize your brand instantly; if they can’t do this, you need to work more on your branding.

Using the proper illustrations will help make your brand more recognizable, it will help communicate your brand’s personality and voice, and help establish a relationship with your users.

Illustration by Irene M. Ray from Ouch!
Illustration by Irene M. Ray from Ouch!

3. Being Unique

A unique brand will be more memorable, and people will be interested in using its products. Illustrations will help you be different, but you must ensure the illustrations are unique and not the same ones other businesses use. They need to be unique to your brand and what it wants to do.

You must create the best illustrations to make a great first impression. If you don’t know how to do this, hire UI/UX design companies to help you. Tell them all the information they need about your brand, and then let them use their experience and skills to help your brand succeed.

Illustration by Icons 8 from Ouch!

How a UX Illustration Adds Emotions

Create A Connection With Users

If you want to create a relationship with your users, then illustrations can help you create the types of relationships you want. Using different illustrations can make users feel happy, sad, loved, disgusted, and more. Using illustrations effectively will help you achieve the goals you have for your brand.

If you aren’t sure about using specific illustrations on your website, then you can test them using a focus group of your target users and make any changes you need to. You must ensure the illustrations you use are consistent with the rest of your branding. If they aren’t, then you are wasting branding resources.

Illustration by Julia Gnedin from Ouch!
Illustration by Julia Gnedin from Ouch!

Help With Engagement

If your website isn’t getting enough engagement from your users, then illustrations can help you. Users will have an emotional response to the right illustrations. All you need to do is show these illustrations along with the content you want the users to see. Pairing them together will help you tempt users to read your website’s content.

If they like your content, they will want to read more and look at other parts of your website. All you need to do is engage them just once. Illustrations can help you do this, and it isn’t difficult. If you are having trouble, find a graphic designer to help you.

Illustration by OlFi from Ouch!

Communicate The Right Tone

Images are worth more than words. They can do much more with a lot less. You can use illustrations to change the mood of the user and the tone of your content. All it takes is one correctly placed illustration.

You need to avoid using stock illustrations and images. This is a mistake that newer designers can make. Doing this makes your website look like any other website, and it isn’t unique. You need to create illustrations or have them created for you. There are plenty of people you can hire to help you do this.

Illustration by Giulia Maidecchi from Ouch!
Illustration by Giulia Maidecchi from Ouch!

Conclusion

Using illustrations to add emotions to your UX will help you increase engagement with your product and make people want to see more. If you aren’t already, you need to start using custom illustrations and imagery in your designs. Don’t use stock images; you need to be unique and creative.

Thanks for reading!

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