Comments
Summary
In Emotional Design, Norman again discusses the design of the things around us. This time it is focused on the emotions contained within designs and the emotions evoked by designs.
People invariably interpret objects as if they have emotions, it does not matter whether they are animate or inanimate. Because of this, designers should consider this when working on their new creations. Especially for games, movies, music, and robots. Emotion can easily be added to these mediums and are, in fact, necessary if the product is going to be successful.
In the beginning of the book, Norman discusses the impact a design can have on our emotions. A design impacts our emotions on three different levels: visceral, behavioral, and reflective. The visceral level is the immediate, natural, and instinctive impressions people get from looking at utilizing a design. Good behavioral design leads to a functional product. The product might be ugly, but if it gets the job done right, it is scoring points with the user on a behavioral level. The reflective level is affected when a person consciously thinks back on using that product. The reflective emotions are not necessarily accessed when the product is in use. It is when the user is thinking.
Discussion
This was a decent read. It is hard to discuss this book as if it was new though. This is the third book by Donald Norman that has been required reading and I'm growing tired of reading numerous books about design without being able to put any of it into practice.
I think that if we were going to be putting the things that we are learning from the Norman books into practice, it would have been good to do this with the first books before reading this one. Emotional Design focuses on an entirely different part of design and it would have been nice to put the other focal points into practice before moving onto this one. There is a lot of information to take in and it will be hard to utilize it all at once instead of taking it in piece by piece.
I would say that we practice design all the time, every time we write code we are dealing with design. I like learning as much about it as possible, I have my whole life to practice design, I'm in college to learn it.
ReplyDeleteWe may not be practicing the rules of design we have covered but we have an opportunity every day to analyze design in the objects around us.
ReplyDelete