[jalfresi]

"...the emotional experience trumps the direct navigability of the site itself"

The above statement is everything that is wrong with modern visual styling of software. After everything is said and done, software is a tool which people use to accomplish a goal. I would argue that anything that causes friction with that is Bad Design.

As much as some visual/interaction designers may think that "experience is everything", they ignore that they are insisting on manufacturing and enforcing their opinion of what the users experience should be and forget that the user accomplishing their goal is the only experience that matters.

[roldie]

There was a great talk at SXSW last year entitled "The Myth of Reducing Friction in your Product."

Basically, within a given flow (say onboarding or signup), you want to consider having some points of friction interspersed with low friction points. Adding friction in the right places helps to create users who will a)come back and b)will be more active users. The speaker presented some data to back up her assertions.

Getting back to OP's point, the emotional experience is a point of friction that may be worthwhile. Though it may slow down the conversion process or whatever flow the user is supposed to go through, it may result in users who become more attached to the product and ultimately spend more.

http://schedule.sxsw.com/2015/2015/events/event_IAP35677

[wtetzner]

The thing is, if the site doesn't make it easy for me to accomplish what I want, then my emotional response is frustration. It doesn't matter how nice or pretty your site is if I get frustrated before I have the chance to appreciate the design.

I think trying to evoke a certain emotional response can really only be effective if it's not getting in the way.

[TeMPOraL]

You're right, but there is one key insight you need for your view to be complete: most websites are created to sell you shit - often services, which exist only to be bought. Their actual usefulness is pretty much irrelevant beyond the point people start paying for them. Your ability to use a website / webapp to create value is not something they care about.

As an industry we're hurting ourselves by being in this state of cognitive dissonance. The result is that designers try to apply patterns for selling people shit when they're working on tools, even if given tool is the "real deal" and not meant to drive sales by appearance.