Emotional Design

OK - here is what I got from Don Norman's Emotional Design. Emotional appeals are subconscious, we are not aware of them. There are three types of emotional appeals:

• Visceral - The way that something appears speaks to us.
  
• Behavioral - We want to feel in control.
• Reflective - The voice inside our head that separates us from others.

I find that I am having trouble explaining each of these, but the video given in the following link does a great job: Norman on Emotional Design.

Aside from that, the only new ground that Norman covers that interested me was the last chapter (which seemed a bit out of place). Here he talks about robots in the future and how they should understand our emotions. This can help them interact with humans more efficiently than before. I personally think that getting robots to that level of understanding is scary. If we can learn how to make robots function exactly like us, who's to say that we were not made by some other creatures... Anyways, that is kind of a different topic that I could talk about for a really long time.

Back to Norman: if he would have just called me in 2004, I could have told him what to do. I would have told him not to write another book. Everyone makes mistakes... We understand the need for him to have written TDOET, but everyone saw its flaw. That includes me, check my blog post on the book:

There is one part where I stray from Norman's thoughts. I think that visibility is important in design. However, I do not think that it should trump elegance. If something is aesthetically pleasing to look at, consumers are naturally inclined to buy it. Especially compared to something that looks like... Ugh! Hopefully designers can find a way to integrate elegance and functionality, but elegance should never be completely disregarded.

Come on Norman... I knew this was coming and so did everyone else. We all know that emotions speak to us louder than functionality. Why did you feel the need to write a book about it?