How Baidu Tieba Boosted User Engagement with Emotion‑Driven Perception Design

1. Finding the Breakthrough Point: Building a Perception Experience Design Model

To address the need for richer, more nuanced user experiences, the Tieba UE team combined motivation psychology, emotion theory, and need theory, discovering that emotions not only drive motivation but also directly influence behavior. They created a design model that uses emotions and motivations as break‑through points, guiding pre‑behavior design (emotion analysis, motivation activation, trigger design, expectation enhancement) and post‑behavior design (feedback enhancement and new goal creation).

2. Mining User Perception States and Touchpoints

2.1 User Segmentation and Feature Description

Users were divided by time into two typical groups—"content browsing" and "content producing"—and further segmented into stages (first use, gradual mastery, mature stability) to capture changing perception needs.

2.2 Perception Touchpoint Discovery

For each user type and stage, the team mapped experience paths, identified touchpoints, and described the associated perception states (type, intensity, expectation). This combined user‑experience mapping with brainstorming, involving experts to generate rich design ideas.

To ensure scientific analysis, a "Perception State Reference Table" was compiled, breaking emotions into granular levels (e.g., "joyful" → "delighted", "surprised", "excited").

3. Defining Perception Keywords and Design Strategies

From the gathered touchpoints, three core keywords were distilled: "sense of presence", "sense of companionship", and "sense of achievement". Each keyword was defined and linked to concrete design strategies, forming a "Perception Pool" that guides future work.

4. Tieba Perception Experience Implementation

4.1 Sense of Presence

Implemented friendly first‑impression designs, conversational UI, and guided onboarding to make users feel welcomed and valued. For new content creators, helpful tips were shown; for mature creators, advanced feature guidance and exposure‑boosting scenarios were provided.

4.2 Sense of Companionship

Real‑time interactive bubbles (e.g., "User X sent a red packet, grab it!"), personalized toast messages, and ritualistic invitations for high‑quality creators were introduced to convey continuous companionship.

4.3 Sense of Achievement

New users receive badge animations for first posts or replies; mature users see milestone recognitions such as "Hot post ranking" or "Fan count breakthrough" to reinforce achievement at critical moments.

Conclusion

The perception‑experience design methodology and tools have been applied across nearly ten Tieba projects, delivering measurable data improvements and positive user feedback. The team will continue refining these practices to create more delicate, warm experiences, and hopes the shared insights will aid others undertaking similar projects.