Task 1a: Emotional Design

It is true to say that the world of design is rapidly going towards the side of beauty and fun rather than function of it.  In the past, designing a new product would have meant making things function more efficiently.  But nowadays, there are not much things that we are necessarily need to live because the function of the product is at the peak of its existence.  Maybe, the high technology is allowing us to create good functional products and this will be the reason why emotional design is necessarily used when designing a product.

Donald Norman in this video discusses how’ the new me’ of design is to understand about beauty and emotion and he also brought us to the insight of wonders of our minds, how these aspects can be applied to everyday products around us.  As Norman mentioned, i reckon higher level of positive interaction with the products being designed is depended on understanding of human emotions. 

Donald Norman explains the emotional experience by dividing it into three processes which include a Visceral, Behavioral and Reflective process.  The first, visceral level is the most basic and is set within us through biology and years of evolution. Our senses our attraction to different smells, textures, sights, noises and etc.  Norman gives us an example by showing a visually appeasing water bottle. The user could only use it for decoration because they don’t buy this just for water.

Secondly, behavioural level is feeling in control which includes function and usability of the product. The rondavel tilting teapot is given to us as example. The 3 stages of using this product evokes and emotional response and communicates to people that the pot if out of water when it is lying down. 

The last level presented by Donald Norman is reflective and it is the level where that little voice in your head resides. Just like a navigator in the car, the voice that notice you things are going to be fine, or not, etc. for instance, someone buy an environmentaly safe car which shows that you really care about the nature of the world. 

In conclusion, I was delight to watch this useful video which made me think about what beauty and emotions are about and making things fun and I think, Evoking an emotional response in our target user is a key to interact with our design.