Why are cute objects so seductive?
Fluffy unicorns and candy: how cute design affects our brain.
I spend hours staring at pink, fluffy, miniature stuff on the shelves. Do they impact my happiness hormones? Definitely. But cute objects are more than simple toys; they are a successful, global phenomenon.
Cute products ranging from miniatures, cartoon characters to food packages and furniture, are designed to manipulate emotions, evoke a state of mind, and eventually end up in the consumers’ lives. Feeding people’s emotions and need for expression, cute products ended up sustaining a whole cultural movement, kawaii. Now, it is almost impossible to dodge cuteness, as you can find it in any market, anywhere.
One thing is certain: cute products work.
The ingredients of cuteness
Let’s take a baby, for example. Have you thought that your behavior around babies is actually hijacked by their cuteness? According to the experts, the same thing happens when we look at objects or animals that we perceive as cute.
Morten L. Kringelbach, Associate Professor and Senior Research Fellow in Neuroscience, University of Oxford
According to the researchers, childish features in animals and even objects have the power to stir the same feelings we get by looking at human babies: affection, pleasure and willingness to protect. [1]
No wonder so many companies use cuteness to lure us into their shops. The proliferation of cuteness in the markets is not only ensuring the undeath of the cartoons it produces but also the cultivation of culture around pretty stuff.
Think of Hello Kitty, a tiny, mouthless cartoon character that took over the world. Designed almost 50 years ago by Yuko Shimizu the kitty reached a market milestone worth $7 billion a year. What made it so successful?
According to the current designer, Yuko Yamaguchi, the mouthless face of the kitty allows people to project their own feelings onto it and therefore, enrich the character with a certain personification that resonates with them.
Yuko Yamaguchi for Time, current designer of Hello Kitty
Hello Kitty possesses all the ingredients of cuteness researcher of Japanese social trends, Sharon Kinsella, pointed out in her work. According to her research, a cartoon character, that usually decorates a product, has to be in the following way to be considered cute and therefore, highly consumable for the masses [2]:
- Small, soft, infantile
- Mammalian, round, without bodily appendages
- Without bodily orifices
- Non-sexual
- Mute, insecure, helpless, or bewildered
Considering the emotional effect cuteness has on humans, Hello Kitty became a beloved character among young female consumers, firstly in Japan and then all over the world. The attraction consumers feel towards cute, tiny products is also argued by A. Cheok and O. Fernando in ‘Kawaii / Cute Interactive Media’ [3], a paper that analyzes the size and proportion of cuteness and its effect on people.
A. Cheok & O. Fernando
A cute figure also provides comfort and a sense of companionship for the lonely. The authors above point out the alienating lives of Japanese people, most of them being detached from social life and finding a ‘second family’ in the pretty cartoon characters they surround themselves with. [4]
So, designers can use the cute ingredients to successfully earn the attention and emotional attachment of users and eventually get their money. But how BIG the cute phenomenon really is?
The culture of cuteness
In 1960, Shintaro Tsuji founded Sanrio, a Japanese design & entertainment company that started with a few cartoonists.
Before his company, he was selling sandals decorated with flower patterns when he realized that sandals bearing cute drawings sold better. And the rest is history.
His cartoons, including Hello Kitty, Kuromi and, Gudetama, ended up sustaining a whole cultural movement that started around 1970 in Japan: Kawaii.
Kawaii means ‘cute’ and it is a Japanese movement mostly embraced by young females. The cultural style is based, as S. Kinsella states, on ‘sweet, adorable, innocent, pure, simple, genuine, gentle, vulnerable, weak and inexperienced’ [5], and a touch of the Western allure.
The company’s understanding of culture provided exactly what kawaii people were obsessed with: small, adorable, fluffy, non-traditional looking products and characters.
Even today, Japan is marked by the proliferation of cute drawings, objects, fashion, and ‘behaviors’. Kawaii represents more than a trend, it is a way of identification and expression between individuals.
Now think of your country. I bet most of you are used to seeing fluffy, adorable stuff in the shops.
Do attractive things work better?
Now, what if I told you that attractive design works better, despite minor flaws?
Well, the director of The Design Lab at University of California, Don Norman, already said it.
In his article ‘Emotion & Design: Attractive Things Work Better’ he argues at some point that we tend to overlook some flaws in the objects we are truly fond of. Now would I be mad if my brand new flamingo sofa was coming with a scratch? You bet so. But I am not upset about the minor flaws of my car, because I have an emotional attachment to it.
Don Norman
And here is the irrational reason why I am attached to my car.
My car looks like a pug
I always wanted a pug. They are ugly, fat, and lazy but I love them.
When I was searching for my future car I came across a model that I instantly felt attracted to. It was the Nissan Qashqai, model 2020.
Why?
Because I thought it looked like a pug.
I call my car Pugy. I have a feeling of attachment linked to it because I find it cute, and looking like my desired dog breed.
That’s why I don’t get very upset when Pugy is not exactly perfect. The can holders are too big, the radio is weak, the tank cover doesn’t always open, and so on. Eh, minor details.
I hope the designer of Qashqai doesn’t get offended by this…
What can we learn from all this?
I am writing from a consumer’s perspective and maybe this is the most valuable insight a designer can get.
I love cute products but I do not buy them often. I just stare at them in the shops. What does it take for a cute product to actually make me pay for it?
- When cute doesn’t mean kitch and cheap
There are serious brands that adopted the cute strategy to increase their reach and sells. One example is Logitech.
Logitech addressed the segment of people looking for color and fun design in devices. What did they achieve? They improved the design’s emotional effect on consumers.
Seth Godin, in his book ‘Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable’ states that the success of Logitech is based on their understanding of the market: they are not trying to revolutionize the way mice and keyboards work. They are in the ‘fashion business’.
And that’s why I buy their products.
2. When there is balance.
The reason I don’t like Ikea, besides their cover-up of illegal deforestation, is that they are predictable, cheap and copy-pasting the same patterns and design lines over and over again. At least in my opinion.
What I do like about a brand is when it offers a balanced palette of options: some products are elegant, simple, clean, and others are colorful or cute.
One example is Pasabahce, a Turkish company founded in 1935 selling glass objects. In their shops you can find a range of expensive, unique, hand-made glass objects that could decorate a king’s palace if you ask me. Besides that, they have everyday objects that could satisfy the taste of any designer. And even more, between all these elegant objects, you can also find cuteness.
In this kind of environment, elegance and cuteness work hand-in-hand to ensure a pleasant experience for everyone, maintaining the image of luxury and high quality.
And that’s why I buy their products.
Conclusion
Design is always an experiment. Why not try to put some cuteness here and there? Something to make the user smile when they open a program interface on a Monday… it never happened to me but I would have appreciated it. Now that I learned about the power of attractive and why not cute design which can come from its shape, color, patterns, texture, or the experience it provides, I will make even more intentional decisions for my products.
References and Citation
[1] Kringelbach, Morten L. How cute things hijack our brains and drive behaviour.
Accessed from: https://www.ox.ac.uk/research/how-cute-things-hijack-our-brains-and-drive-behaviour
[2], [5] Sharon, Kinsella. (1995). Cuties in Japan. Media and Consumption in Japan pp. 220–254. Citation p. 226.
Accessed from: http://www.kinsellaresearch.com
[3], [4] Cheok, Adrian & Fernando, Owen. (2012). Kawaii/Cute Interactive Media. Universal Access in the Information Society. 11. 1–15. 10.1007/s10209–011–0249–5. Citation p. 11., p.7
Accessed from: https://www.researchgate.net
[6] Norman, Donald. (2002). Emotion & Design: Attractive Things Work Better. Interactions Magazine. 9. 36–42. 10.1145/543434.543435. Citation p.11
Accessed from: https://www.researchgate.net
Other reads:
Godin. Seth. (2003). Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable.
I am an architect passionate about design, heritage and entrepreneurship. I run the architecture office Kule Arhitectura, and I am currently enrolled in a Master’s Degree in Heritage Conservation. I am happy to share my thoughts and experience with the world and learn from fellow writers on Medium!
