Attending this course and passing the exam earns 1 UX Certification credit, which also counts towards the optional Interaction Design Specialty.
Learn more about NN/g's UX Certification Program.
Create delightful experiences that touch, convince, or excite your audience
This course is a combination of lecture format and participatory workshop. You will participate in group exercises to reinforce the learned principles and techniques.
The course also includes:
Attending this course and passing the exam earns 1 UX Certification credit, which also counts towards the optional Interaction Design Specialty.
Learn more about NN/g's UX Certification Program.
"AWESOME session! The speaker is entertaining and the content is completely full of helpful information with real-life uses. I took notes on almost every slide. Everything was insanely useful!"
Nicole Kina, Ford Motor Company, Dearborn, MI, USA
"Very practical course on how to influence users in the right way. I left with a ton of ideas on things to test and change on my site when I get back."
Melissa Jones, Glasses.com
"I've always been fascinated and intrigued by the reasons behind why humans do what we do. This course took a deep dive into the psychcology behind human behaior. I was very impressed by how much we covered in a depth that was impactful. Everything tied seamlessly into one another and I feel I already have retained a ton of useful information to take action on. I'm also very inspired to continue my own research in this field. I would highly recommend everyone experience this course."
Jacquelyn Halpern, DockYard
"This was a very helpful course. As a designer for an ecommerce site, this will definitely help me make changes to increase conversion."
Danielle Paff, Taylor Corporation
More Participant Comments
"Loved the mix of theory and practical application so I can put these concepts to work on my own site."
Natalie Webster, Children's Hospital Assoc.
"I was hesitant taking a class about "emotion" but I gained a LOT from the class. Great concepts. Put concepts to a lot of vague ideas or unknown reasoning for why I feel certain ways seeing different designs."
Renae Hummel
"Refreshed my thinking and gave me good priorities when designing experiences."
Peter Middleton
"I really learned a lot from this course. Very engaging information. Therese is a fantastic public speaker. I look forward to taking more of her courses in the future."
Mary Formanek, Phoenix, AZ
"Found the lecturer excellent in delivery of the course content. The structure and content of the slides is organised in easy to follow fashion and found it very understandable. Straight to the point. Many real-life examples using known sites."
Astrid Tomac, Fleetmatics, Ireland
"A lot of abstract concepts in this one - and I was delighted to come out of the course having understood each one, with strong reinforcement from the group exercises and open ended discussions - thank you!"
Rohit Shukla, Black Pepper Limited, LEAMINGTON SPA
"I would definitely recommend this course. I took up this course, half asleep at 2am since I'm in Melbourne. But the course content was so good that I stayed up all the way until 9am. The Persuasive and Emotional design course was just amazing Therese, Kudos! Hope I get to meet you in person someday and I hope I get to teaching like you do, someday."
Abhishek Suresh, Bupa Health Insurance, Melbourne, Australia
"Our target users are trades workers for heavy manufacturing, so boosting credibility is an uphill battle. Therese has done a great job to supply me with the necessary tools to help us build their trust."
"This session was fantastic! Katie was clear and engaging and she presented material that was well grounded in research, but still directly applicable to my work. We covered a lot of ground, but I'm not overwhelmed by the information."
Christopher Burdick, Moody Radio
"Presentation was energetic and fun!! Materials covered were very insightful."
Brittan Reinhart, Zion & Zion
"Fantastic energy. Super clear and interesting examples."
Mathew Cooper, Mastercard
"Shows how these methods can be a very powerful delivery tool, eg gamefication."
Paul Gillespie, Standard Life
"This course is great for anyone who has conversion-based goals, especially in e-commerce."
Tasha Lovsin, The Workshop
"Compelling, comprehensive information — Katie is a walking encyclopedia of knowledge on persuasive web design techniques and research."
Morgan Huff, VCU
"Great examples (visuals) and case studies to support theories."
Shaun Myles, Influence Catalyst
"Katie delived a well-rounded course with interesting tasks and backed-up by well done videos. Definitely recommended!"
Monica Kars, SRC
"This course was great. It covered many different attributes of persuasive web design and the course overall was very engaging and all of the examples were easy to understand."
Amy Padres, Simpleview, Inc.
"Loved this course! Indispensible if you're doing any kind of e-commerce."
Gabirel Marley, Build Direct
"Loved this! Was a lot of material, Katie is a rock star covering it all! Great tips & vocab you will be able to take back & use right away not only to persuade externally but internally as well."
Iris Mack, Penn Medicine
"Great overview of the way behavioral science affects human decision making when it comes to web use."
Ksenia Arie, Red Brick Health
"While I'm not in UX, this class is very helpful to me as a person in SEO. Search engines highly value good user experience, so that means I do as well!"
Tracy LeGaut, Simpleview
"Fast paced, rich of valuable content, engaging teacher with lots of cool tips."
Daniela Penati, John Muir Health
"I really enjoyed the instructor. I felt that she was very knowledgeable. This course was really interesting, I learned so much. What's interesting is that I've learned more than just about people and websites, but about people's behaviors in general."
Marcus Davis, Northrop Grumman
"Great course if you want to find out why your users don't come back to your site any more. Katie is amazing instructor."
Levent Demir, Unibet
"I was pleasantly surprised this course was rooted in behavioral economics/psychology. It's an often implied part of design & UX."
Devin Brown, Audience Partners
"Katie is an incredible instructor, her energy, delivery and overall approach is very enjoyable. Great topics covered with lots of very useable concepts and world examples to solidify those concepts. Truly a great class and incredible instructor."
Josh Awesome, EA
"Great insights from research and meta-research. NN/g has done legwork and stat aggregation that we are too busy to do."
Pete Brown, University of Arizona
"Katie did a terrific job presenting facts and insights supported by research, and then applying that to our own design and products."
Emily Schepp, Giant Creative Agency
"The balance and roadmap of today's presentation was great. I was able to easily synthesize my thoughts as the day progressed. It was also nice to hear the balance of ethics since it is often overlooked in the office. Thanks, Katie :)"
Kate, KeyBank
"Katie does a great job of applying the concepts of the class to real-world applications."
Courtney Dockter, Simpson Property Group
"I feel Therese provided great examples to match and reinforce her information. I feel the exercise was beneficial and helped reinforce what we had learned earlier in the course."
Kristin, Marshfield Clinic
"I gained a new vocabulary that I can leverage when discussing these UX issues at work."
Jessica Dufour, Bridage
"Excellent and very informative and lots of ideas to take away."
Alex Chew, Itech Media, UK
"I love this course and Therese is fabulous. This is the course I was expecting/wanting and the content is so relevant and done in a way that is simple and easy to apply. Highly recommend this course and Therese."
Niki Kruszka, Niki Shu Designs Ltd, UK
"Very professional, specific and useful. Therese was very knowledgeable and provided a lot of great relevant and practical examples."
Simon Högström Rønbøl, Online-Results A/S, Denmark
"Overall an excellent course. Very happy to have attended. 10/10. Would recommend to colleague."
Jesper Laundsen, Danish Royal Library, Denmark
"Starts gently with some topics that will be familiar to more experienced UXers, but dives into more specific reviews and videos of real users during usability tests."
Esther Gould, Visit Scotland
"I really liked how we covered a ton of helpful tools we can apply on a daily basis. The presenter is very likeable but it was exhausting to go through all those slides/points. I guess a couple more exercises would be active and fun, I liked the usability videos."
Erfan Tahono, Affinitas, Berlin, Germany
"Very useful applications of theory and how they can be used in a work environment. I can relate this to tasks I am working on and now have ideas about why some of the user research results have shown people behaving in particular ways and why they have trusted (or not) some of my content."
Natalie Smithsom, HM Land Registry, UK
"I liked the organisation of the course, proceeding by points is a good way to imprint concepts. The speaker is great and I would like to read/follow her in the future."
Elisabetta, IC Digital, Italy
"Provided me with additional insight regarding the psychology underpinning user behaviour and has given me a range of ideas to test and implement."
Scott Castle, University of Sheffield, UK
"This course has made me think about our users in a number of ways I didn't even consider before. Examples from vastly different industries could prove to be applicable across my industry and more."
Paul C, Service Affinity Group, UK
"In-class discussions were more fun and interesting than usual. Class was engaged. Anyone that wants to be more aware of how to ethically encourage willing customers to take desirable actions should take this course. Therese was engaging and fun. The content was so interesting and I got super excited to learn more about Daniel Kahnmen and Amos Tversky. I read "the Undoing Project" and loved it!"
Sophia Goreczlay, Synopsys
"Loved the clarity and succinctness of presso. Really well designed and delivered."
Rebecca Cornwall, News Corp, Sydney
"Fully packed with research data and examples."
Asif Shahid, Harvey Norman, Sydney
"Very informative, systematic and practical. Now I have a set of solid tools to use and apply to my daily design work."
Junnan Ma, Yoghurt Digital
"Immediately useful insights that I can take home to help users and my organisation to be more successful."
Tristan Viscarra Rossel, Dept. of Veterans Affair
"This course was so relevant! Fantastic information and activities enabling me to apply my learnings quickly and take home a list of optimisations I can apply to our site straight away."
Tahlia Stace, University of New England, Armidale NSW, Australia
"I have been lucky enough to be in several of the courses let by Therese - she is an amazing guide. She gave me a lot to think about and has validated a lot of my assumptions I've made for our user/users journey. I can't wait to apply my new learnings. Always upbeat and professional. Thank you."
Kristie Bedgood, Alchemy
"It's a very interesting subject matter. Engaging and surprising things you wouldn't normally notice. Thesese was funny and high energy."
Laura Prichard, Gravel Experiential
"The best UX course I have taken. I love how the information is backed by research and logic."
Caleb Bahr, Walmart
"I absolutely loved this course! The real-life examples were most helpful. Therese is a fantastic speaker and a pleasure to learn from."
Michael LoCoco, Dell
"Love the large focus on psychological elements that can be used in design to influence the emotion at the user."
Neil Kleckner, Tarrant Regional Water District
"Great presentation, full of humor and practical examples. Plenty of takeaways that are directly applicable to the design of our online experiences to increase customer's joy and decrease annoyance. Love the slide design too, nice work!"
Matthew Finlay, Security Service FCU
"Therese led a high-energy, thought provoking class or persuasive and emotional design that reinforced and expanded my knowledge of the topic."
Mandi Dillard, Wolters Kluver
"I really enjoyed the passion of Therese around the topics. She conveyed ideas I had heard, but in a more digestable way. Looking forward to sharing with my team."
Ryan Johnson, USAA
"Learning the psychology behind design principles and practices was monumental for me. It provided real context and valuable knowledge to simple instincts and habits I've had and have been exploring."
Kimberly Thomas, Booz Allen Hamilton
"I've been in digital for over 10 years and was at first skeptical that the course could provide much value. However, I walked away with not only new learnings and concepts but most importantly practical ideas and examples that I can take away and implement in my work."
Leila Abutaleb, BC Hydro
"This was one of the best virtual courses I've taken. Therese was great, Katie was a helpful and responsive moderator, and the support team was quick to address any tech issues. There was enough variety to keep your attention. The polls, chat, and breakout rooms kept things lively and interactive. Thank you!"
Sarah Mohs, Intuit, San Francisco
"It was very interesting in knowing how emotional people are in turns of decision making. Definitely something good to understand for designing UI or thinking about design strategy. Understanding the users and their emotion can make a huge difference."
Jing, Tangerine Bank,Toronto
"After this course, I am sure in decisions I make when designing user interfaces, and I can predict what impact would they have on a user. Such a valuable experience!"
Marina Bošnjak, VNTRS Consulting AB, Stockholm, Sweden
"Great course with a lot of awesome content. Therese did a great job of teach and explaining."
David Bilbo, Acworth
"I loved how Therese weaved in the principles into her course!!! Made me feel like we were experiencing the lessons, rather than just reading and listening to those theories. Super engaging and informative."
Tan Sei Yee, Government Technology Agency, Singapore
"This course will change how you think about your users emotions and address how to capture the heart and mind of your users."
Fabian C. Schade, Conga, San Jose, United States
"After attending this class, a lot of the things you see on many websites will make more sense, I experienced a lot of Ahaaaa moments during this class."
Alez Zumeili, Amman, Jordan
"The course was very well set-up, very professional. The speaker had a lot of experience in the subject matter and also in giving online courses. Everything flowed very naturally."
Carlos Lleó, EUIPO, Spain
"I loved the speaker's positive energy, it was obvious she genuinely enjoyed the topic!"
Judy, UK
"Therese and Alita were great. The presentation of content was clear. They were engaging and made the seminar fun by using and demonstrating some of the concepts as the activities. I appreciated their good energy and the class also had great participation as a whole."
Mary Teruel, Ingenio LLC, Oakland
"I really enjoyed the Persuasive and Emotional Design course. The topics covered were fascinating and applicable. The instructor (Therese Fessenden) and moderator (Alita Joyce) were fantastic! They were friendly, knowledgeable, approachable, and fun. Overall, the day struck the right balance of engagement, alternating between instruction, polls, and breakout sessions. I highly recommend this course!"
Heather Bennett, Visa, Austin, TX
"This course really helped define aspects of design that affect people—aspects that I could only feel intuitively before, or guess at. I feel like I now have concrete concepts and the language needed to talk about these parts of design and have more robust goals and metrics to go by."
Arlyn Ramos, Sae Design Group, Honolulu, HI
"I'm really grateful to join the course because the topic has so much more to do with my current role and my future endeavours. This will help me a lot to level up my thinking especially with campaigns and collaterals that I do with my work."
Camie Santiago, Philam Life, Manila, Philippines
"Great delivery and sharing by Katie. It has reinforced my knowledge on the trust, human behaviour and the application of persuasive and emotional design."
Gabriel Cheong, Singapore
"I would highly recommend the course of you want to get a deeper understanding of the psychological principles and findings that underly well designed experiences. I personally would consider this knowledge foundational to growing in your career as a designer or researcher. I really liked the number of direct examples and the how responsive the instructor was to answering questions and engaging with the group via the chat. I usually don't care for lecture formats but this was really well done."
Raymond Lemon, GE Aviation, Detroit, MI, USA
"I found tremendous value in this course. There was so much content, I feel like I need a week or two to unpack it and apply it to my designs. I can't wait to take another course!"
Kristen Henmueller, Truckstop.com, Cary
"I really enjoyed this course. Therese was an excellent instructor and the course materials were very relevant to my work. By the end of the course, I was able to better identify principles of influence, understand design elements that impact emotions and learn how to measure credibility in design."
Rachel Shong, GovTech, Singapore
"I'd encourage more B2C to take this. I agree that the principles totally apply. B2C customers often don't even have the "lower pyramid" of basic needs met before stakeholders try to pile on delighters."
Jennifer Day, Seattle, WA
"This is a super interesting course that ties in psychology and design very well. You will learn many design tricks and discover terms that you probably recognize but didn't realize there was a name for it. If you want to learn how to create successful, emotionally-driven, but ethical, designs you should absolutely take this course!"
Aylish Wastchak, Cisco, Chapel Hill, NC USA
"A worthwhile course. Interesting content though I now have the challenge of implementing the lessons learnt in a highly regulated industry. Love a challenge."
Ian Merry, esure Insurance, London, UK
"I liked the variety of studies, books and references the class pulled from. While some of the design points seem obvious - the studied backing them up are solid and helpful."
Barb Chotiner, The Franklin Institute, Philadelphia PA
"I used to design for people with gut feel and best practices, but after this course I feel that I no longer have to just rely on them - I feel better equipped to come up with innovative designs using the principles learnt from the course!"
Derrick Ng, GovTech, Singapore
"This course is definitely amazing into how the human minds work and how we could apply these principles into influencing or even comforting our users! This course is interesting too with the polling questions and house cup events that motivate everyone to be proactive during the activities! Cheers."
Joan, Singapore
"Definitely take this course as it has lots of practical tips that you can apply right away!"
Parul Shukla, Singapore
"I've been designing interfaces for a while and this course gave me multiple new ways to look at how I can emotionally engage my users, build trust, and create moments of joy. I was surprised by how practical the new ideas will be to implement immediately."
Jacob Leslie, Gravitational Wave Data Center - Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia
"It's a great course for UI designers when we explain rationale behind design. It can be often subjective, but, actually there is data and scientific method how we make better design solutions."
Sunghee Kim, Manulife, Hong Kong
"There area lot of benefits from taking this course."
Ranil Perera, Camms, Colombo, Sri Lanka
"After taking this course, I managed to concretize many concepts that have been for too long abstract in my mind. This course combines psychology science, with tactile examples of how specific practices affect positively other people's minds and could lead businesses to strive! It will definitely help me on my day-to-day basis, as I gained both practical guidance, and a more concrete theoretical background to support my ideas."
Zoi Koutsovasili, Skroutz.gr, Greece
"I loved how interactive it was, really appreciated all the small games - they were clearly explained, the materials were excellent and the actives fun!"
Leni Pepelisheva, SumUp, Sofia, Bulgaria
"This is a great course to take. It discusses the psychology of user behavior and designing for it. It goes beyond just designing something easy to use, it's about creating delightful and ethical experiences for users."
Tracey Jackson, MERGE, Atlanta, USA
"I thought this was one of the best courses I attended at this conference! Therese was a great speaker but also the mix of abstract and practical examples was very interesting. It's also great to really take a zoomed in look at the user from an emotional and psychological point of view which really gives a new perspective."
Sylvie Claes, Amsterdam, Netherlands
"I definitely recommend people take this course to get a better understanding of emotions and how they interact with design."
Priyanca D'Souza, Companies House, Bristol, UK
"This is a great course that explores what motivates human behavior. The content was thorough, the instructor was engaging, and I'm excited to refer back to the takeaways throughout my career."
Audra Harvey, Baltimore
"This course is great for anyone looking to understand some of the "why's" behind creating delightful experiences. I think many of us know a delightful experience when we see one, but find it hard to explain or quantify one. This class helped with that immensely!"
Josh Walz, ZoCo Design, Columbus, USA
"Like a knife sharpener for dull websites! These guidelines will make all your projects sharper."
Bridgette Huff, United Network for Organ Saving
When was the last time you truly enjoyed a digital experience? Focusing on branding, design, and usability is only the starting point. Understanding the psychology behind motivation and action and how to incorporate that into your design process can take your user experiences to the next level.
In this course, we discuss psychological principles behind persuasive and emotional design, and unpack the strategies for creating “delightful” user interfaces. We cover practical, gimmick-free techniques to motivate users while enhancing user delight and analyze real-life implementations of these techniques. You will learn how to apply principles of persuasive and emotional design to foster a loyal community of engaged customers.
Nichola Wilkinson
Rift Accounting
(Previously titled Persuasive Web Design)