Design criteria for stimulating emotions in Web applications

This work aims to identify the main aspects of Web design responsible for eliciting specific emotions. For this purpose, we performed a user study with 40 participants testing a Web application designed by applying a set of criteria for stimulating various emotions. In particular, we considered six emotions (hate, anxiety, boredom, fun, serenity, love), and for each of them a specific set of design criteria was exploited. The purpose of the study was to reach a better understanding regarding what design techniques are most important to stimulate each emotion. We report on the results obtained and discuss their implications. Such results can inform the development of guidelines for Web applications able to stimulate users' emotions.