Donald Norman: Emotion and Design

The talk was totally about the fun other than function.

The so called "beauty" is a kind of property that made the user satisfied, but not simply a good appearance.

Donald Norman presented three levels of emotion, visceral, behavioural and reflective.

For me it’s easy to understand the first two levels.

The juicer gave out a good sample of good appearance but less function, but it still make consumers feel happy to have one with them, though it can't do anything.

Apart from talking about function, the ping-pong table designed by Hiroshi Ishii is another kind of "useless". It needs players' behaviour to interact with it. Though it is not a good ping-pong table, it is surely make a positive emotional reflect and do make user willing to use it.

The design concerned on being's emotion might about how to attract people's attention and led them feel comfortable when using them. Norman mentioned the experiment held by Alice Isen. The experiment showed that people may work better when relax and lighted; on the other hand, there would be a worse outcome when people are in a stressful atmosphere. As a consequence, if a product brings a right influence on emotion, even though it is not so friendly to “use”, we might say it is a good design.

So, looks good and behaviour good is so important to make users, what about reflective?

The reflection of appearance may say, comes from the first glance of the object. When a person feels happy to do something with it, he or she may go on to the next step, that’s called the start of behavioural level. However, the reflective is not only about think twice before buy something. It seems about a more complex physiological concept.

I thought about classical things while came across the sample of car and watch. The well known thing surely give people a reason to have one and always being picked out by others. This course of motivation, operation and reflection may be a case of reflection.

Say motivation, could be variety, and the emotion also be variety. It’s hard to achieve a balance in funny and function, but harder to achieve the balance in several emotion.

But the emotion is funny.