Emotional Design

Donald Norman

Discussion

In this book, Don places higher importance on aesthetics in contrast to functionality and ease of use as was the case in his previous books. He discusses how design evokes emotions in people and why some of the designs are so successful in doing so.

I thought this book was fairly interesting in that it covers an alternative aspect of looking at designs. One can find companies like Apple or Google which have built an empire partly if not fully based on emotional appeal. Marketability based on aesthetics or emotional value also have a role to play in any design’s perceived satisfaction.

Don puts a case for a robot’s need to have emotions so that it can learn and adapt, avoid deadlock or inaction by expressing frustration. I feel that some of his ideas are a bit over-generalizing. There already exist several different machines in industry that perform their work with pin-point precision without any hitch. It may be argued that best robot work is one which is done in background without any emotions attached. However to the credit of Don, his comments can be interpreted to lay more emphasis on emotional value of design. Recent publications have highlighted how customising Roomba has lead to increased user satisfaction. It has also been observed in the case of Aibo or Asimo that making robots real-world like in appearance has led to their increased acceptance in domestic market.

Overall I enjoyed reading the book. I feel that it certainly has a point to make but it should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Disclaimer

The work discussed above is an original work by the authors/affiliations indicated at the starting of this post. This post in itself was created as part of course requirement of CPSC 436.