Designing for stressed out users | Part 1

What is stress and why does it matter

Published in

Designing Services

6 min readApr 26, 2020

Given the state of the world, it seemed the appropriate time to write up something I’ve been considering in my design work since first working with credit solutions for low-income families in 2014 —

How do you design experiences for stressed-out users?

The following is going to be a bit long, so I’ve broken it into two parts. Links are provided to academic papers for those who like such things.

Part 1 (you are here)

What is stress?
What does this mean for digital products?

Part 2

What are stress behaviours?
How can we mitigate stress through design?

Ready?

1. What is stress

First a definition:

Stress. a physical, mental, or emotional factor that causes bodily or mental tension

We all know stress is bad. Research says it is, the government says it is, and I’m sure the majority of us do not want to be designing experiences that stress people out.

But it happens to everyone at some point because stress is simply the body’s response to a situation it cannot handle.

Cognitive appraisal theory

There’s an academic called Lazarus who you’ll discover as soon as you start investigating stress. He was the one who developed cognitive appraisal theory, which sounds complex but it’s not.

Step 1 — I perceive a thing exists in front of me

Step 2 — I assess (appraise) whether or not I have the skills or competencies to deal with it

Step 3 — I deal with it (no/low stress) or I freak out and run away (high stress)

At the point at which stress becomes noticeable, it is because the human perceives that they are thwarted in their desire to achieve a certain goal. There is a mismatch between what they can control, their own skills and self efficacy and the challenge in front of them. Whether or not it’s a realistic assessment (appraisal) is irrelevant — it’s all about the individual’s perception.

Goals and stress

Now, not everything causes stress to the same people in the same way. And the same thing can actually stress you one day, but not the next.

A stress response therefore is a reaction to being unable to meet a goal.

In short, you perceive that the demand you are faced with, threatens to move the goal further away form you.

Things that make your goal seem far away, are the perception that the task is:

Complicated
Time-consuming
Difficult
Unfamiliar
Out of my control

There are also things that make the goal seem closer, when it is perceived to be:

Simple(s)
Quick
Easy to achieve
Something I can already do
Under my control

Example: I am late for work

Response A — Far from goal: My boss is waiting for me to be at a meeting, this train is completely broken down but I can’t get off it. I literally physically cannot move towards my goal of being at the office

= high stress response.

Response B — Closer to goal: My boss is not in the office today, my first meeting is not for 2 hours, the train will probably be moving by then

= Low/medium stress response.

You can tell the people who have lower sense of control and feel further away from their goals — they’re the ones swearing under their breath in the morning when the train is delayed.

2. What does this mean for digital products?

So if users are coming to your product either already stressed or getting stressed from being on your site, what is happening? Well that’s when the cognitive appraisal of your experience results in a yes or no response.

Cognitive appraisal of digital products and services

As described above, user sees demand (the experience or product put in front of them), appraises it (can I use this, does it make sense) and decides whether or not this is the thing for them.

In a positive appraisal (shown above), the user experiences the task as doable and completes the tasks with minimal stress. The product is perceived to be supportive of goals, and supports the user’s sense of self-efficacy.

In a negative appraisal (shown above), the user finds the task overwhelming, does not complete and leaves the product. Now, much as we saw in sports fan engagement and the ideas of BIRGing and CORFing— there is an element of “I have failed” but there is much more “this website is sh*t”. In short, the user projects the failings onto the product and the brand, and is not going to come back any time soon.

A real world example

In exactly the same way as the commuter on a delayed train, if the user perceives that your experience is complex, overwhelming, difficult, confusing and so forth, then they are going to experience some level of stress response.

If the user is coming to your experience already in a stressed state, then this is going to be exacerbated by poor or overly complex design.

Example: I used to design products for users with low credit ratings or financial problems such as debt. A user coming to a debt management website will already be stressed. If your experience does not help and support them, it will have failed.

I will look in more detail at specific needs and behaviours and design strategies in the second part of this (already far too long) post.

The impact of a negative digital appraisal

Now stress doesn’t have to be literally, grabbing your hair, wringing your hands. It can simply be that the level of demand is felt to be too great. For example if your interface is overwhelming, you’re going to generate significant additional cognitive load, and overwhelm your user’s brain.

If users perceive your product to be adding to their levels of stress and negative emotions, then the two possible outcomes are:

They are going to associate your product with negative emotion
They may leave to get away from it.

Neither of these are ideal outcomes for us, our users, or our product owners and stakeholders.

In the second part of this, I’m going to talk about what stress looks like online in more detail, ways we can design experiences to mitigate stress, and why not all types of stress are bad.

Designing for stressed out users | Part 2 : A framework to identify and reduce stress behaviours