How does a design make you feel?

An effective way to validate one design over another is looking at how it makes users feel and what words they associate with it.

A simple way to measure the effectiveness of a design is on Poll the People, using the image preference test template. This test will help you decide between two designs based on the reactions, feelings, and feedback from participants.

The testing method is simple, upload two different designs to the template and instruct participants to view each design, and describe how it makes them feel, their reactions to the design, and their opinion on what design is better.

The output from this kind of study is quantitative feedback showing you what design resonates better with participants and qualitative feedback that shows you how the user felt about the design. There isn’t much complexity in test analysis, you just have to read through the user opinions to understand if the design made users feel the way it was intended to.

Testing in this way can be very useful when creating or redesigning your brand. Running a new design against an older version of the branding can give you insights into how users interpret your new direction.

In addition to branding, you can use this method to test the user interface of apps, websites, copy, marketing images, and a lot more. Just don’t forget to create the test for the resources you want to analyze and read all of the feedback from the participants to validate design decisions.