Put on a happy CMS face: Storyblok's facial coding experiment reveals how AI is sparking joy

Let’s face it: Happiness is complicated.

OK, OK. I can feel you rolling your eyes through the screen. 

Well, of course it’s complicated, Captain Obvious…

Maybe I am stating the obvious. I mean, we all feel happiness. We can generally agree that it’s an emotional state characterized by a sense of joy, contentment, and fulfillment. But defining what makes each of us happy? That’s incredibly subjective. As one expert stated rather obviously, “It’s not the same for everyone.”

And that’s why it’s so darn complicated. 

Happiness also has a weird relationship with time. Most days, it’s fleeting – like when you catch a glimpse of your wicked haircut in a hotel lobby mirror, or revel in that winning serve you made during a lunchtime game of pickleball. It’s a flash of light. A moment of joy.

Then there’s the overall sense of satisfaction you might have about your life, where happiness defines your relationship to big topics with long-term implications. Think romantic partnerships. Marriage. Children. All the stuff that gets you weepy when you watch Love Actually for the fourteenth time.

Our careers fall into this latter category, and seeking happiness in our work might be one of the most complicated edges along this pane of glass. It’s worth noting that in a 2024 Pew Research study, over half of all respondents said they were “extremely or very satisfied” with their jobs. 

Half. That’s a bigger number than I would have predicted. 

It also means that the other half isn’t necessarily experiencing “happiness.” When we consider the many factors influencing this, people are a key ingredient. Co-workers, employees, supervisors, bosses. You get the gist. Money is important, but it’s surprisingly not in the top spot.

In fact, it’s the intangibles – things like day-to-day tasks, hybrid or remote work options, and that dreaded commute time – that really weigh on the happiness factor. This is probably why self-employed people over 65 expressed the highest levels of work satisfaction in the study. 

But what about digital technologies? Can the tools we use influence our happiness?

Finding zen in your CMS

The question of whether technology is good or bad for us is just as complicated as the happiness conundrum. 

Plenty of research affirms our addiction to the internet, particularly for young people. Memes and social media have been studied at length, revealing significant shifts in our brain chemistry and behaviors. And with smartphones, tablets, laptops, and other devices constantly in our faces, the impacts continue to compound. 

But it's not all bad. A study published by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) last year examined the effect and mechanism of digital technology on happiness. While it codifies the variable impacts across different communities and cohorts, it illustrates how digital technologies can promote psychological happiness, particularly in employment or work situations.

At the same time, digital technologies can make our work life kind of miserable. When it comes to the software we use in our daily toils, we’re frequently confronted by an imbalanced happiness quotient, where the problems or limitations of a software tool affect our mood. And content management systems are no exception. 

As industry expert and CMS Critic contributor Deane Barker noted, the number one complaint of organizations looking to replace their CMS is, simply, “our editors hate it.” Of course, that’s a bit hyperbolic, but we humans do tend to focus on our frustrations. As such, every CMS will likely disappoint its users in some way, shape, or form. 

In Deane’s book, Things You Should Know: 25 Lessons I’ve Learned About Buying Content Technology and Services, he compares finding the right CMS to finding the right person to marry. We have a lot of fantasies about our perfect “soulmate,” but the reality is less romantic, and we might have to make some trade-offs before putting a ring on it. The result is less about happiness or joy, and more about being satisfied with the best possible outcome. 

It's no Hallmark ending. But in defense of CMS vendors, it’s not just their products that kill the mood. It’s everything else: the conflated custom functionality, opaque business practices, and lack of author engagement – all topics that Greg Dunlap highlighted in Designing Content Authoring Experiences. 

As CMS platforms become increasingly commoditized, user experience is becoming one of the last vestiges of differentiated value. To their credit, CMS vendors perform extensive UX testing to improve, optimize, and achieve higher levels of customer satisfaction.

But are their efforts impacting happiness? Can they spark real joy from users? 

That's the question Storyblok, a headless CMS vendor, is endeavoring to answer. In a recent experiment leveraging facial coding technology, they uncovered how AI's power and potential might be the key to unlocking more happiness for users.  

To learn more about this experiment and the tech behind it, I connected with Chelsea Gibbons, the VP of Research Strategy at Sago, who headed up the project. 

FACS version fiction: Tapping the power of facial coding 

Anyone who has worked in software product development knows the importance of usability testing. There’s a wide range of tools available to support ongoing optimization (like Hotjar and Browserstack), but manual testing with controlled environmental variables is much more effective in gauging amorphous emotional responses.

Facial coding has long been central to tracking user behavior in these testing scenarios. The practice has its roots in the work of Swedish anatomist Carl-Herman Hjortsjö, who pioneered the first human taxonomy for facial movements in 1969. His descriptions were formalized in 1978 by American psychologists Paul Ekman and Wallace Friesen, in what is still referred to as the Facial Action Coding System – or FACS. 

Facial coding enables software testers to manually identify a host of anatomically possible facial micro-expressions and classify them into specific “action units” within a numerical rubric. These units can be used to associate expressions with higher-order decision-making processes, including the recognition of basic emotions. As a documented system, facial coding is so reliable that it's used extensively in computer animation to reinforce accurate human responses with digital characters.

At Full Sail University, where I help shape the curriculum for our web, application, and cybersecurity programs, we have a UX Lab that’s dedicated to helping students measure and improve the customer experience in mobile apps, AR/VR, simulations, and other emerging technologies. The environment is set up with facial tracking technology to help gain feedback from test group participants while using a website, watching a trailer, or playing a video game. 

As Chelsea explained, facial analysis coding can be used for a broad spectrum of applications, with web UX being a typical use case. It’s a very common tool used by researchers and emotional scientists looking to uncover subconscious emotional activity.

“Facial coding leverages the respondent’s device camera to identify movement in specific areas of their face and head,” she explained. “These movements are then analyzed and classified as emotional responses. Facial coding allows for non-intrusive and natural emotion measurement, as it captures emotional expressions in real time without requiring participants to report their feelings verbally or in writing. This provides more authentic and unbiased insights into emotional responses.”

Chelsea went on to explain how facial coding provides high temporal precision, enabling researchers to analyze micro-expressions and subtle changes in facial expressions, which might occur in just fractions of a second. This level of detail is valuable for understanding the dynamics of emotional responses and their triggers.

“Facial coding generates objective and quantifiable data, making it suitable for both research and commercial applications,” she said. “By converting facial expressions into numerical data, researchers can conduct rigorous statistical analyses and track changes in emotions over time, contributing to a deeper understanding of human behavior and consumer preferences.”

There’s incredible depth and richness to facial coding taxonomy. Researchers have identified trackable variations around lip corner depressions, neck tightening, jaw dropping, and even head movements in specific directions. The upward rolling of your eyes or the dilation of your nostrils all become part of a complex fabric for assessing emotional and behavioral state, and allow researchers to better understand how we feel when we’re using software. 

Testing for happiness

Storyblok’s experiment tapped experts at Sago, a global data and research firm, and IVP Research Labs – a hub for helping qualitative researchers gain deeper insights and provide data visualization. IVP offers facility-based, online, and in-the-field testing designed for a spectrum of use cases.

The researchers leveraged facial coding technology and micro-expressions analysis to determine the emotional reaction of participants completing different tasks on Storyblok's tech platform. The mandate was simple: to see if better-designed technology could actually elicit joy from people doing their day-to-day work.

To be clear, this was a small sample, gauging the responses of 30 experienced marketing professionals from the US, UK and Germany. The team selected participants who had only used older marketing technology platforms, giving them tasks which could now be completed in easier ways using modern technology solutions – specifically within Storyblok. 

“This study was unique in that it contained a cross-cultural component,” Chelsea specified, reinforcing the distinct geographic focuses. “And it had the added qualitative component in one-on-one interviews to help us understand the ‘why’ behind the facial coding data. The combination of qualitative conversations compiled with the facial coding data is what led to such rich results.”

Of course, as you might guess, AI was part of the modern feature set, and those capabilities had the biggest impact. The research revealed that the highest levels of happiness elicited from participants were when they used AI to automate tasks (it’s worth noting that none of the participants were from AI companies, so these data points are relatively unbiased).

I asked Chelsea about the experiment’s parameters and where the concentration was within Storyblok’s UX. 

“Participants engaged with AI in two places,” she said. “The first was using the AI feature in [Storyblok’s] Ideation Room to create content from scratch or polish existing content. The second way AI was used was in the translation feature. In this exercise, participants translated the entire webpage into Spanish and then switched it back to English. Both AI exercises were favorably received and sparked joy.”

You can read my overview of Storyblok's Ideation room, which provides a familiar interface for collaborating on content. It feels instantly familiar, like a Word or Google Doc, providing users with a clean canvas for creating. And of course, there are some fantastic AI features peppered throughout. 

There's also a great video below that outlines the high-level benefits:

Tracking beyond AI

OK, AI makes sense to me as a “joy sparker.” And for a testing cohort using less-advanced technology products – and who haven’t experienced AI’s breadth and potential – it could be a truly breathtaking moment to witness it in action. 

But it’s more than just AI features that make users comfortable or even happy. Content editors are concerned with the holistic vibe of their platforms. They're moving around the entire ecosystem, and it all needs to feel connected and cohesive.

I asked Chelsea if there were other measurable factors contributing to the happiness quotient for Storyblok’s test subjects. She said that while the AI features were positively received and clearly differentiated Storyblok within the CMS space, participants found joy in simply exploring the tool. 

“A major finding that came out of this research was that participants were positive towards Storyblok because of its intuitiveness and efficiency,” she said. “The visual appeal of Storyblok – along with the real-time previews – eliminates time-consuming steps and brings joy versus [its] competitors.”

I've long maintained that Storyblok's UI and overall experience are among the best on the market. It's incredibly lithe, easy to navigate, and thoughtful in its architecture. This goes back to a “CMS Idol” demo in 2023 at the Boye & Company CMS Kickoff, where the platform's composability was showcased. 

Does this research codify that software companies should invest in more AI-powered tools or features? And is this sample large enough to draw those kinds of conclusions? While the data are compelling, there are still many questions about what's actionable. It's clear that more testing would be advisable to draw any palpable conclusions. 

Still, as Chelsea explained, the results of this facial coding experiment provided a solid framework for Storyblok to keep optimizing and iterating – and that might be enough to start with.

“As a result of this research, Storyblok is continuing to refine and enhance its platform to provide the best user experience possible,” she said. “As such, they will continue to enhance the Ideation Room and implement usability refinements that were uncovered in this research.”

Don’t worry, be happy

Aristotle said that happiness, or eudaimonia, is the final goal of human life – and is achieved through a lifetime of virtuous activity in accordance with reason. He argued that it's not a temporary state of feeling but a life of human flourishing that involves developing good habits, cultivating both moral and intellectual virtues, finding balance in life, and engaging in activities like contemplation and meaningful relationships. 

Smart guy. He knew a thing or two about philosophy. And while happiness is subjective, he got a lot of the universal pieces right.

A while back, I wrote a review of Storyblok Labs, a tangential initiative that was focused on bringing joy back to content management. In my assessment, I tried to draw a distinction between the momentary flare of “joy” and the more elongated state of “happiness” – and how that translated for users experimenting in Storyblok's innovation playground. They were already trying to improve the happiness quotient, and this latest experiment is another example of that continued commitment. 

We spend a lot of time measuring different variables of software user experience, but happiness can be elusive and more open to interpretation. That’s why using the fundamentals of facial coding can be incredibly revealing, and vendors should invest in this kind of targeted research.  

I’ve written extensively about the sort of “magical” experience of watching an AI tool like Midjourney generate incredibly rich images and video from basic prompts, or a CMS instantly ripple brand-aware content across an entire ecosystem in seconds. In this sense, having users experience their first AI feature might be akin to ancient people making fire for the first time. 

That might sound exaggerated, but think about your own experience. Was it jaw-dropping? Mine was.

I think it’s logical and even predictable to track a measurable bump in user happiness relative to AI, especially for users who might have an embedded bias around its overall impact on our culture and professions. 

To that end, the World Economic Forum just issued a study suggesting that data-rich industries, where many of these CMS knowledge and content professionals work, are the most vulnerable to being disrupted by AI job takeover. Setting those concerns aside, perceptions tend to shift when people can see the positive benefits of their work, rather than the negative diatribe being peddled across the media. 

That said, many of the AI features we’re seeing in CMSes will become commonplace – perhaps even commoditized – over time. And faster than we anticipate.

That’s why the bigger signal for success might be the reaction to Storyblok’s intuitiveness and efficiency. Sparking joy as users explored its Ideation Room and preview capabilities suggests that Storyblok is already doing what it has always done well: delivering a world-class UX. AI can enhance this, but it all starts with a strong foundation – an ecosystem of possibilities that stokes our imagination and unlocks real wonder in our work. 

So keep reading the wrinkles. Maintain a healthy feedback loop with real communication. Use facial coding and other tools to measure and optimize your products. Most importantly, stay close to your customers.

It’s your best shot at securing more smiles in the long run.

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