Emotional Design - Full Blog

Reference

Emotional Design

Donald Norman

Basic Books 2002

Summary

This summary is derived from reading the first three chapters of Emotional Design, though it likely reflects the theme of the entire book. Emotional Design focuses on issues surrounding interaction between devices and humans that can be most easily classified as emotional. This is established by first examining the idea of attractive objects seeming to work better than their not-so-beautiful counterparts. The reasoning is simple: people ignore the functional faults of objects which are more ascetically pleasing. The mind is more flexible about the possible responses of the device, and therefore faults are not easily found. Users are more willing to work with the device than against it. Norman continues by exploring the three levels of design: visceral, behavioral, and reflective. These aspects of design are each concerned with different aspects of the interaction. Visceral is connected to the appearance of the device, while behavioral is more focused on the performance and reflective on the amount of personal connection or contentment a user feels from the device. This area of the book implies many strategies that could be effective for marketing a device. Norman continues to further examine the three levels of design. He explains that visceral is an emotional signal creator, which is interpreted by the brain across cultures and people. Behavioral is directly related to the user's use of the object and its perceived function.Finally, reflective design conveys a meaning of a device which is unique to each person.

Discussion

While this book was somewhat repetitive in nature, I feel that I personally gained new insights into the interaction that surounds devices and their user's. I can definitely see the direct effects of attractive design present in products like Apple iPhones, MacBook Pros and iPods. Survey's always indicate high levels of customer satisfaction, and though the products are well made, I believe their attractive design creates an extra factor which leads their users to be more satisfied with them. I believe the implications of this text for Computer Scientist are obvious. Software and hardware projects can benefit from considering the three levels of design.