Three Emotional Design Strategies to Deal with FOMO

Abstract

Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) is a phenomenon that is often related to the use of social media. It significantly influences on negative affectivity and lower levels of perceived quality of life (Elhai et al. 2021). Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research and individual User Experience (UX) professionals have proposed conceptual solutions to avoid FOMO, which drives social media use (type one). Yet, there has not been a proposed experience-driven solution for other types of FOMO caused by passively browsing social media and upward social comparisons (type two). It explicitly happens to a more image-centric social media platform such as Instagram. This paper introduces a new approach to deal with type two FOMO through emotional design, designing with the intention to evoke or to prevent a particular emotion (Desmet, Demir and Hekkert, 2009) and proposes related emotional design strategies. Firstly, the paper reviews the relationship between type two FOMO and negative emotion as one of its components. Secondly, it explores type two FOMO stages and other related negative emotions. The result of the main study contributes to creating a framework, and it helps to identify design opportunities for applying a new approach. A new approach focuses on positively exploiting type two FOMO for the benefits it may potentially bring and aims to remove negative emotions. Lastly, it proposes three emotional design strategies to deal with type two FOMO by evaluating three design cases.