Emotional design

A couple of days back i watched Don Norman's speech on emotional design

Don Normans talk on emotional design was a real eye opener for me. I wouldn’t so much say it was inspirational to me, but it more opened up a complete different perspective to design. Emphasizing the effects aesthetics have on our emotion. He went on to explain the 3 levels of emotions, visceral, behavioral, and reflective.

To me visceral was the big eye opener, as it allowed me to explore the fact that functionality and innovation isn’t what only makes a design successful exploring the fact that something may not have any actual intended functionality was a real eye opener. But this then made me question, this is not so much product design, but this is more meant to be art. This was the main issue I had with his visceral explanation. Everything he said I did see to be true, but in everyday items we are beginning to turn them into artworks rather than its actual general purpose use.

I found Don Norman’s talk about the behavioral level of emotive design more....realistic, and more relevant to designs, as appose to the other levels. He explains how the behavioral level is more orientated towards the actual functionality of the design; this functionality is where the innovation takes place. Although I do feel that he explained the behavioral in too much depth, but I strongly understand and admire his point about it relating the subconscious, this is shown in all modern and past designs, and simply emphasizes its ease of use. We will know how to use a design simply by what it looks like, or along with the feeling of control we get over a performance vehicle, this is what encourages the individual to purchase it.

The Reflective level of his talk I found very intuitive, it is very true……I wish it wasn’t, but unfortunately it is very true. People will buy products simply to emphasize their image; it just shows how a design is there to suite social standards. People can be stereotyped as a rev head, an environmentalist, a lawyer, a construction worker and so many more categories simply by what car they drive. People know this, and they understand what each product makes them look like, and this results in their decision on what they purchase.

In total I found Don’s talk very intuitive, I had my slight disagreements but in total his idea was correct and factual, and I strongly appreciated the way he made me look at visceral design.