Emotional Design

It's been a very fascinating thing to witness the complete 180 that Donald Norman has made over the course of nearly two decades between the publishing of The Design of Everyday Things and 2004's Emotional Design.  In the former, he made some very strong (and very cranky) arguments about the cardinal importance of functionality in the design of products, and frequently made fun of the sort of products and structures that "must have won a design award."  Critics of Norman have stated that if we were all to follow the principles in TDoET we would have usable but ugly designs.

But after years of research in the area of human emotions, Norman embraces the very sort of products he so readily dismissed in his previous book -- like the juicer that dominates the front cover of Emotional Design.  It is pretty to look at, certainly, and it does have some functional aspects (the lowest point of the "rocket" body serves as a drip point for juice) but according to its designer it is not actually intended to be used for making juice.  Norman's point with this example (and the rest of his book) is that emotional and sensory appeal in design takes precedence over functionality.


This main point breaks down emotional appeal into three main categories: visceral, behavioral, and reflective.  Designs that appeal on the visceral level are the ones that elicit a base, visually-stimulating response.  Behavioral design focuses on a product's ease-of-use and the pleasure derived thenceforth.  Reflective design considers the rationalization and intellectualization of a product -- does it tell a story or make its owner think more deeply about it?  Norman's talk at TED Conference 2003 illustrates these three new principles pretty well (and will take you a lot less time than reading this book).


I enjoyed reading this book and finding out more about how emotions are so critical to the way that we work as humans.  Norman was much less of a blowhard in this book and I had an easier time taking him seriously.  Well, at least until I got to the final chapter of the future of robots -- that was a major left-turn that felt like the end of the movie A.I. Artificial Intelligence; things were going fine and then all of a sudden I was like, "wait, did that really just happen?"  It felt very out of place (though I suppose it's kind of a segway into his next book The Design of Future Things) and was the most weakly-argued of his chapters.  Overall though, I enjoyed it much more than TDoET but the last chapter has me a little scared at what The Design of Future Things has in store.