Designing for emotion is very well established in older design disciplines such as advertising, fashion, graphic, interior and product design, and has made good
progress in more recent disciplines such as service design. Design work integrates a range of creative practices with technical and business considerations. There is a
continuum of practices from highly demanding technology design to highly creative craft work. Even at the most technical extreme, there are vital creative aspects,
especially when faced with challenges that are novel for an area of design, such as designing for emotional aspects of technology usage. The outcomes of novel creative
practices cannot be known in advance, making it impossible to fully plan creative work. Researching for design—that is, in support of truly novel creative design work—must carefully consider the work practices of the designers who are expected to benefit from new theories, knowledge, information, processes or procedures. Any research on emotions that assumes good science can be automatically applied to any design context will severely limit its potential impact and reach. It is unlikely to
be attractive research that can be realistically applied. This chapter begins with the consideration of how emotions are considered in design, summarises the history of an affective focus in human–computer interaction and reviews the author’s practical support for an affective focus within interaction design. It then relates these three reviews to some key perspectives from creative design research to support an initial agenda for effective impact for research for affective design.