Emotional Design by Donald Norman
Last topic for this year: Donald Norman’s book Emotional Design.
He discusses the non-practical, non-rational implications of design. What makes people love or hate a particular design. After the rational, usability centered investigations of D.O.E.T, he realized that much of our lives are governed by not by the choices about what works best, but how something affects our emotions.
He breaks this down into three levels of design:
Visceral-’what nature does’; how something affects our senses. Taste, smell, visual appeal, texture. My question for you is: What is a website with Visceral appeal?
Behavioural-’all about use’; how well does something suit its purpose. What we call usability, functionality.
Reflective-’…message…meaning…culture’; what cognitive associations accompany a design. Are you drinking Starbuck’s or ‘Joe’s Fairtrade Local Jobs Supporting Environmentally sensitive Java’? Nobody gets a tattoo for the functionality; it’s all about meaning, expression.
Notice your responses to your everyday tasks, and how these terms relate to your choices. When are your activities governed by these different levels of response, and when are you surprised that what you thought was a purely rational decision is in fact based more on how you think other people will respond to your choice?
Marketing people are all over these concepts, trying to convince you to buy something for some spurious reason. But it isn’t just useless marketing speak. How can the designs you create take into account these different levels of response by your target audience? Can you make your design more successful by looking beyond usability and incorporating your audience’s non-rational responses?
