Why emotional design wins in insurance and highly regulated industries
With the rise of awareness of dopamine-fueled tech growth, it’s likely that most founders know that emotions can have a role in tech adoption. And with good reason - Stanford’s Baba Shiv estimates that 90-95% of decisions are made based on emotion (1).
But more than just untethered feelings, what makes the difference is emotional connection – the belief that the product (and by extension, the organization behind it) “gets you”. This isn’t a new idea either - Harvard Business Review was exploring “The New Science of Customer Emotions” nearly 10 years ago (2).
Where this connection is prioritized, products excel. In fact, research has shown that if you do nothing but make the user feel understood, you will have built connection and safety (3). People will assume you can solve their problem (and that you care about it) if you show that you understand them.
In fact, the biggest secret in product development is that products don’t win because of long feature lists; they win because of the way they make people feel.
The initial Instagram release had exactly three non-table stakes features: it allowed you to post pictures, add a filter if you wanted, and for people to react to those features. And one could argue those were table stakes too, because without them there really was no app.
But what did it do that outweighed the short feature list? It made people feel: seen, creative, connected, liked, and popular. Sometimes it also made people feel rejected and anxious. It wasn’t all positive. But it was enough to lift it out of irrelevance and create curiosity. Instagram had 25K signups on its first day alone.
If you’re like many people, you may think of UX (and by proxy, emotionally connected design, which is a big chunk of what we mean when we talk about UX) as the domain of ‘fluffy’ products like social media apps, games and self-improvement products. If you’re in a highly regulated industry like insurance, finance or healthcare, you may have assumed this wasn’t your sandbox in which to play.
To that I say, sit right down and grab a bucket shaped like a tower. We’ve got a castle to build.
That’s because if anything, it’s even more critical that products in highly regulated industries like insurance, healthcare and finance find ways to connect with users emotionally, because the stakes are higher in those interactions. Entertainment is one thing. Your health is quite another. And yet, the impact of emotional connection is even more pronounced.
A 2022 study found that satisfaction with healthcare interactions increased simply by having an empathy-driven dialog with the patient, regardless of the severity or outcome of the disease (4). Simply believing someone cares provides comfort.
But it does more than that. Experiencing empathy is also associated with the ability to drive behaviors. Patients who have positive relationships with their providers are more likely to stick to their treatment plans (5).
Your technology can do this too. Even if sticking to a treatment plan isn’t relevant to your product, most transformational tech initiatives aim to drive some sort of behavior: increased app usage, decreased customer service calls, better financial choices…the list goes on and on, but they’re all an effort to drive a beneficial behavior or reduce a detrimental one.
Unfortunately, many visionaries in highly regulated industries are mistakenly told that they have to choose between compliance and user experience.
You need security and compliance. They’re not optional, and in fact they need to be rock-solid. The last thing you want when you’re trying to build trust is doubt about the security you provide. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have a smooth experience. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have a smooth experience and one built on advocacy.
In fact, you can scarcely afford not to. Accenture's 2025 Banking Consumer Study found that North American banks with advocacy scores in the top 20% grew their revenues 2.6 times as fast as those with low advocacy scores (6).
The solution is to use the emotional connection as the ‘bread’ around the experience. (Side note: it always trips me up when people refer to the bookending thing as a “_____ sandwich”. If you have bread, pastrami (7), bread, that’s a pastrami sandwich, not a bread sandwich. Therefore, emotional connection, other stuff, emotional connection is an other stuff sandwich, not an emotional connection sandwich. Still a sandwich though. Probably delicious.)
Emotional connection does more than just make users like you. It makes them open to what you have to say, and that means you can have a greater impact. There are two primary emotions for inspiring behavior: hope and fear (I’ll cover this more in a future edition). Connection works as a point to establish trust, whether the message you’re sharing is around hope, fear, or both.
The basic pattern looks like this:
“I see you” -> Establish trust at entry point -> Introduce new pathways
Let’s break that down.
“I see you.” The first step is simply to let users know that you see them. This is often done with direct statements like “Thinking about your retirement? So are we.” But it can also be done in less direct ways, by assuming the agreement. “We’re always thinking about your retirement”. It just loses some of the impact if you’re not willing to address the user directly. Imagine you’re wanting to go to lunch with a friend. You could open with “Thinking about lunch? Me too.” Or, you could open with “I’m hungry.” Both establish alignment of goals – but the first one also establishes connection.
Establish trust at entry point. It’s also true that users will not trust you unless you show that you care about what they want, and what they want first is typically to get a basic task accomplished. If you’re an app that helps users to do their taxes, help them get their W-2 imported cleanly. Yes, it’s a little boring. But it matters to the user, and by establishing trust by showing you care about their experience, they’ll be more open to what you want to do next.
Introduce new pathways. Once you’ve built trust by showing people that you see them, and that you care about them, you can introduce them to new options they may not have considered in the past. This is where your revolution comes in. Why can’t you do it earlier and skip the other stuff? That would be like proposing marriage on the first date: you’re unlikely to succeed, and you make yourself look a little delusional in the process.
The most common objection to this is that people are afraid it will cost too much or take too long to make something that connects with audiences. Does anyone share that objection to developing a movie that connects better with audiences? How about a commercial? There is no logical reason that UX needs to make the project take dramatically longer. Our average UX engagement is 10-14 weeks, and it costs around 10-15% of the total project cost. It is a line item in the budget, but that line item easily returns tenfold ROI in the first year in decreased customer service calls, increased referrals, better app store ratings, and the like.
If you’re in a highly regulated industry, and your goal is revolutionary tech products, can you afford not to invest in the single element that is most directly responsible for adoption and stickiness?
Notes
2 https://hbr.org/2015/11/the-new-science-of-customer-emotions
3 Morelli, S. A., Torre, J. B., & Eisenberger, N. I. (2014). The neural bases of feeling understood and not understood. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 9(12), 1890-1896. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4249470/
4 Wang, X., Wang, R., Sheng, F., Chen, L. (2022). The effects of empathy by caregivers on healthcare service satisfaction. Frontiers in Psychology, 05 October 2022, Volume 13 - 2022 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.912076
5 https://tech.snmjournals.org/content/50/4/357
7 Pastrami smells like delicately aged gym socks. Fight me.