Introduction
Cuteness design or cuteness engineering entails bringing a feeling of warmth and comfort into the DNA of one’s design. Let’s be honest, how many times have we bought a Mc Donald’s Happy meal or a Kinder joy egg just for the “cute” toy? I am sure all of us have done it at least once.
As designers, we can build elegant, intuitive, usable, useful, equitable and enjoyable experiences. The “cuteness” or “kawaii” factor is sometimes an important factor that makes people come back to use a product/service. The book “Cuteness Engineering Designing Adorable Products and Services” by Aaron Marcus talks about how cuteness is interpreted and evolved over some cultures in the world and how it plays a major role in HCI. In this post I would like to outline my response to the discussions in this text and provide some additional insights on the topic of cuteness.
Cuteness around the world
Cute originated from the word “acute”, and carried the sense of ‘clever, keen-witted, sharp.’ . It evolved over time to be used for attractive young people, and then finally for babies and other baby-like things. Today, there are many instagram dogs, babies and cats that have a huge following and make their way to everyone’s feed. Cultural, cuteness and kawaii started from Japan, spread across China and now has made its way to everyday things as a marketing tool.
“Kawaii” in Japan and the adaptation in China
Japan is one of the leading countries in technological advancement today. They have their own version for major e-commerce websites, search engines etc. The kawaii factor in all these designs are very clearly evident. Japanese anime and manga culture have also become increasingly popular, as we know.
It is not just their technology, the Japanese have a lifestyle that encompasses cuteness. We all have heard of the Japanese fantasy school girl, cute desserts and boba tea. All of these arouse the feeling of care and warmth, making their culture so prevalent.
Cuteness has become a widely accepted phenomenon in China. It plays an increasingly important role in closing the gap between technologies, designs, and users. Initially influenced by Japanese, Korean, and Western pop cultures. The conceptualization and representation of cuteness in China have adapted to the unique traditions.
India’s Hutch puppy and zoozoos
According to Aaron Marcus, Africa, Europe, India, South America, and the US have less impact by cuteness. I have contrary beliefs to what the author suggests. Although India may not have a traditionally cute cultural appeal like Japan and China, there have been a few instances of cuteness design that has tipped the market share noticeably.
First, was the adorable hutch puppy or pug mascot of a telecommunications company Vodafone. This advertisement (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsKzu1pYik0) was a simple film about a boy and his dog. The boy is walking and the dog is following him. And then comes the line “Wherever you go …our network follows”. The advertisement campaign started in 2009 but till date, most people in India know the dog breed as “the dog in the vodafone ad”. The sales of vodafone did quite well when the ad was launched but staggered due it’s poor network connection.
Second, ZooZoos are advertisement characters promoted by Vodafone India since the Indian Premier League Season 2 (IPL). ZooZoos are white creatures with ballooned bodies and eggheads who are used to promote various value added services of Vodafone. ZooZoos and the cuteness factor along with the sports fandom for cricket in India resulted in a very successful marketing campaign for Vodafone again, but didn’t stay the same for long because of market competition. Both these examples have cuteness design integrated in their campaign and resulted in a lot of buzz around the product that it was advertising and is ultimately a successful attempt.
Integrating cuteness in design today
User Experience Designs today are integrated with cuteness in very discreet but efficient ways. I have categorized these techniques based on use case of kawaii infusion.
Colors and shapes
The following attributes for what is cute were identified by research conducted in japan:
- Round shapes are judged to be cuter than sharp shapes.
- Pink, orange, yellow, and green are better than other colors, especially cold colors.
- Colors with high luminosity and high saturation are preferred
- Soft and fluffy materials are kawaii.
These seem like an accurate list since naive looking, fluffy, round, pastel things often induce a feeling of protectiveness and care. One such example is the use of soft, round animal personas in this Home chore tracking app we use in my apartment.
Emoticons, gifs and all things filters
Emoticons, gifs and stickers as we all know have become an important communication tool in the contemporary online world. They make us smile and induce a strong emotional response compared to plain old boring “okayyy” and “hmmmm”. Stickers and small widgets have become so prevalent that they are used by many brands to increase engagement on their social media, brands have their own filters and AR augmentations for people to experience their products through a screen.
These cute filters, stickers and emoticons are a very significant way people interact with technology these days. And along with AR advancements can be a very big step in designing cute things.
Customizable online personas
Earlier, Microsoft had clippy and other customizable office assistants. They would assist you with tasks and you could make them do animations. These Interfaces were designed poorly make people look stupid, or feel insulted or threatened. The effect can be to make them annoyed to the point of losing their temper. Clippy eventually vanished because users found it patronizing.
Later, from the popularity of emoticons came the personalized and customizable versions “memojis”, “animojis” and “bitmojis” etc. The appeal of these tiny cartoons is that we can customize it to create an avatar of ourselves and interact with our friends and family.
Memojis and animojis were introduced by Apple. These cute animated objects on our screen recognize and copy your facial movements like pouting, lowering eyebrows, or rolling the eyeball.
Bitmoji was released by snapchat, it is a way to make customized stickers with you (your bitmoji) in it. Bitmojis can also be dressed up in different clothes and are shown on interactive maps.
Interactive cute scenarios
The last category of cute things in UX is Interactive scenarios. Google’s Doodle games, Duolingo's owl and Spotify pets are a few such examples. The spotify pets UX solutions identified a problem statement; humans like listening to music with their pets. They created a very smooth, cute experience for these users by letting them describe their pet and curating a playlist according to the description.
Conclusion
Cuteness can be of deep cultural significance and engrained in many aspects of a country. It can also be used as an advertising and marketing strategy or tool to create strong emotional responses in the target audience. In its entirety, Cuteness has undeniably become a very important tool in User Experience and Human Computer Interaction to create successful and popular products. It need not be necessary for every design use case and sometimes may also be unnecessary and annoying in some applications. In others, it may be a very attractive and enjoyable tool to help humans express themselves and brands to showcase their products. Overall, cuteness is like cherry on top of the cake, it adds so much value to design if and when necessary.