Emotional Design: Why We Love (Or Hate) Everyday Things (Donald's A Norman)

Chapter One
Attractive Things Work Better
           Donald Norman puts forth the idea that things (designed objects) tend to work "better" when they are more aesthetically pleasing. He arrives at this conclusion via a neuro-cognitive perspective -- basically that the emotions you experience as a human being change the way you experience the interaction with the object as you are interacting with it. In layman's terms: if you are in a good mood, you are more creative, perhaps choosing alternative paths to achieve a desired result, and more tolerant of difficulties encountered when interacting with an object. He makes a very plausible argument that there are three levels with which the human brain interacts with the world: The visceral level, the behavioral level, and the reflective level. The visceral level is the mostly unconscious automatic reactions that we have that prepare us to survive any given unknown encounter. The behavioral level controls everyday behavior -- what we do in situations that are not novel. While the reflective level allows us to intellectually exert a finer level of control over the other two, but only after we have determined that we have survived the encounter and have time to reflect on what happened. This fits in with what I understand of evolutionary biology. It makes sense that we could have only survived to the present day if we evaluate all new encounters with a sort of 'fight or flight' preparatory suspicion. Over the millennia, we animals have developed an innate sense of which sensory experiences generally promote survival (warm fuzzy things) and which ones potentially threaten it (sharp pointy things). However, what I believe is that because humans have language and the ability to educate successive generations, the survival oriented benefits of the visceral reaction to everyday things has become diluted over time. Norman explains this in relation to design in that our visceral reaction is manifested as emotion related to products, and one that we cannot always necessarily explain. What is interesting about this is Norman's assertion that the visceral level still usually wins in any given situation. What this means is that sometimes even when we consider all the variables, we still like things for reasons that may not be entirely logical. Norman's idea, then, is that if we can design objects with properties that exploit this emotional connection, we should have a better chance of success in whatever it is we are trying to achieve through the design we are creating. Apple understands this and is currently exploiting it (along with being first to market) to mop the floor with its competitors. Consider the case of the iPad or iPhone vs. any supposedly technically superior Android device. Apple made their devices so pleasing to use, from the design of the hardware (with features like rounded corners) to the experience of using the software (pleasing sounds and feedback, intuitive buttons, large pleasing interface elements, satisfying touch gestures) that it doesn't matter if the hardware capabilities of some of their competitor's products are technically superior. The experience of using an iPad puts us in a good mood, and therefore we prefer to use it. That is not to say that the logical reflective part of our brain can't overcome this -- after all, some people still buy Android tablets (and some people keep snakes and spiders as pets). The lesson to take away here is that considering your audiences' emotions as they use the thing you are designing can pay enormous dividends. I look forward to reading more of Norman's book to learn how to achieve this in future designs that I participate in creating.


Chapter Two
The Multiple Faces Of Emotion and Design
          His chapter on “The Multiple Faces of Emotional Design” discusses the visceral, behavioral and reflective aspects of design. In very simplified terms, visceral design is the appearance or “surface” quality of the design of an object is it attractive or appealing? In other words, is it something we have an emotional, visceral reaction to? Behavioral design is the way in which the object is used how effectively we operate or “behave” with the object (also software, etc.). Finally, reflective design refers to how we feel about the object or design what emotions it evokes using or having used it. In other words, how we reflect on the object. This analysis is amazingly clear and useful in the question of design. In looking at Apple products, it’s easy to see that one of the reasons that they are so successful is that they tend to address all three qualities they are attractive (and therefore we have an emotional reaction to them beforehand), they are typically easy to learn and use and therefore the behavioral aspect is positive, and, because of their general ease of use, and cultural/societal “approval” of Apple devices, we typically feel good or “reflect positively” on having used devices. This is also a really useful tool in analyzing why some designs fail, and also in recognizing that design does not have to successfully address all three aspects. For example, a number of the teapots that Norman refers to in his book have little practical use but are extremely attractive. Their visceral and reflective design is extremely good therefore, while their behavioral design is poor. This does not mean they have failed if the designers goal was *not* to make a “useful” teapot. On the other hand, user interfaces (such as the early incarnations of Android and Windows) had relatively good *initial* visceral appeal people wanted to play with them. However, once users began to spend time with the devices or interfaces, they quickly found them frustrating. The visceral design was there but the behavioral design was poor. Consequently, the reflective design was poor too. Few people felt particularly good about being foiled an operating system. This does raise one question I have about Norman’s approach: Although I can see it’s possible to design something that is heavily visceral or behavioral (attractive but not easy to use, not attractive, but easy to use), I wonder if there are any devices or designs, other than his example of momentos, that are heavily reflective. That is, is it possible to design something that is neither attractive or easy to use, but which creates a good emotional reaction having used it? While this may sound glib, in fact, the only thing that immediately comes to mind is something like the UNIX operating system. I don’t think anyone would argue that UNIX is either particularly attractive, nor that it’s particularly easy to use (assuming we’re not talking about an X-Window interface or the like). However, at least personally, I found it *enormously* rewarding to have actually wrested something out of UNIX. This may be pure masochism on my part, but actually having worked in a UNIX command line, while neither viscerally pleasing nor behaviorally pleasing, is at least something I can take some pride in. However, I suspect this was not a design consideration. Heathkits were actually more rewarding than Norman suggests, in that there was a great deal of learning accomplished and the design and layout of the instractions were usually a delight. The last suggestion of reflective design, fashion, sadly, remains a total mystery to me, but then I can’t imagine wearing anythign but the most comfortable shoes social strictures would allow.


Chapter Three
Three Levels Of Design: Visceral, Behavioral and Refletive
          Norman’s three levels of cognitive processing are:-
 • Visceral - The most immediate level of processing, in which we react to visual and other sensory aspects of a product that we can perceive before significant interaction occurs. Visceral processing helps us make rapid decisions about what is good, bad, safe, or dangerous. It is this level of processing or something quite similar to it that author Malcolm Gladwell discusses in his latest book, Blink.
• Behavioral - The middle level of processing that lets us manage simple, everyday behaviors, which according to Norman, constitute the majority of human activity. Norman states probably rightly so that, historically, interaction design and usability practices have primarily addressed this level of cognitive processing. Behavioral processing can enhance or inhibit both lower-level visceral reactions and higher-level reflective responses, and conversely, both visceral and reflective processing can enhance or inhibit behavioral processing.
• Reflective - The least immediate level of processing, which involves conscious consideration and reflection on past experiences. Reflective processing can enhance or inhibit behavioral processing, but has no direct access to visceral reactions. This level of cognitive processing is accessible only via memory, not through direct interaction or perception. The most interesting aspect of reflective processing as it relates to design is that, through reflection, we are able to integrate our experiences with designed artifacts into our broader life experiences and, over time, associate meaning and value with the artifacts themselves.

        In the first three chapters of Emotional Design, Norman presents his three-level theory of cognitive processing and discusses its potential importance to design. However, Emotional Design does not suggest a method for systematically integrating Norman’s insightful model of cognition and affect into the practice of user experience design. It is my hope, in the remainder of this article, to • suggest some deeper implications of Norman’s ideas for the design of user experience • provide a method by which UX professionals can incorporate his ideas into a way of developing a richer understanding of users • show how UX professionals might begin applying his ideas to the design of products

        Designing for Visceral Response
“Designing for the visceral level means designing what the senses initially perceive, before any deeper involvement with a product or artifact occurs. For most of us working in user experience, that primarily means designing visual appearance and motion….” What does it mean to design in a manner that takes advantage of what we know about visceral processing? Designing for the visceral level means designing what the senses initially perceive, before any deeper involvement with a product or artifact occurs. For most of us working in user experience, that primarily means designing visual appearance and motion, though sound can also play a role think of the now classic Mac power-up chord. Those of us designing devices may design for tactile sensations as well. A misconception often arises when discussing visceral level design: that designing for visceral response is about designing beautiful things. Battlefield software and radiation therapy systems are just two examples where designing for beauty may not be the proper focus. Visceral design is actually about designing for affect that is, eliciting the appropriate psychological or emotional response for a particular context rather than for aesthetics alone. Beauty and the feelings of transcendence and pleasure it evokes is really only a small part of the possible affective design palette. For example, an MP3 player and an online banking system require very different affects. We can learn a great deal about affect from architecture, the cinema and stage, and industrial design. Affective aspects of design deserve further attention and offer great opportunities for analysis from a holistic, UX perspective. “When a user interface promises ease of use at the visceral level or whatever else the visceral promise of an interaction may be it should then be sure to deliver on that promise at the behavioral level.” However, in the world of consumer products and services, where many of us work, attractive user interfaces are often appropriate. Interestingly, usability researchers have demonstrated that users initially judge attractive interfaces to be more usable, and that this belief often persists long after a user has gained sufficient experience with an interface to have direct evidence to the contrary. Perhaps the reason for this is that users, encouraged by perceived ease of use, make a greater effort to learn what may be a challenging interface and are then unwilling to consider their investment ill spent. For the scrupulous designer, this means that, when a user interface promises ease of use at the visceral level or whatever else the visceral promise of an interaction may be it should then be sure to deliver on that promise at the behavioral level.
       
         Designing for Behavior, or Interaction
Designing for the behavioral level means designing product behaviors that complement a user’s own behaviors, implicit assumptions, and mental models. Of the three levels of design Norman contemplates, behavioral design is perhaps the most familiar to UX professionals, especially those working within the spheres of interaction design and usability. “Designing for the behavioral level means designing product behaviors that complement a user’s own behaviors, implicit assumptions, and mental models.” One intriguing aspect of Norman’s three level model as it relates to behavioral, or interaction, design is his assertion that behavioral processing, uniquely among his three levels, has direct influence upon and is influenced directly by both of the other two levels of processing. This would seem to imply that the day-to-day behavioral aspects of interaction design should be the primary focus of our design efforts, with visceral and reflective considerations playing a supporting role. Getting behavioral design right assuming that we also pay adequate attention to the other levels provides our greatest opportunity for positively influencing the way users construct their experience with products. Not following this line of reasoning can lead to the problem of users’ initial impressions being out of sync with reality. Also, it is difficult to imagine designing for reflective meaning in memory without a solid purpose and set of behaviors in place for the here and now. The user experience of a product or artifact, therefore, should ideally harmonize elements of visceral design and reflective design with a focus on behavioral design.

          Designing for Reflection
“Designing for the reflectivelevel means designing to build long-term product relationships.” Reflective processing and, particularly, what it means for design is perhaps the most challenging aspect of the three levels of processing that Norman discusses. What is clear is that designing for the reflective level means designing to build long-term product relationships. What isn’t clear at all is the best way to ensure success if that’s even possible at the reflective level. Is it chance that drives success here being in the right place at the right time or can premeditated design play a part in making it happen? In describing reflective design, Norman uses several high-concept designs for commodity products as examples such as impractically configured teapots and the striking Phillipe Starck juicer that graces the cover of his book. It is easy to see how such products whose value and purpose are, in essence, the aesthetic statements they make could appeal strongly to people’s reflective desire for uniqueness or cultural sophistication that perhaps may come from an artistic or stylish self-image. It is more difficult to see how products that also serve a truly useful purpose need to balance the stylistic and the elegant with the functional. The Apple, iPod comes very close to achieving this balance. Although the its click-wheel navigation is perhaps less than optimal in some respects, users’ visceral reaction to the product is tremendous, because of its savvy industrial design. Its reflective potential is also huge, because of the powerful emotional connection people experience with their music. It’s a winning combination that no competitor has been able to challenge. Few products become iconic in people’s lives in the way that, say, the Sony Walkman did. The iPod is quickly ascending to that status. Clearly there are some products that stand little chance of ever becoming symbolic in peoples lives like Ethernet routers, for instance no matter how wonderful they look or well they behave. However, when the design of a product or service addresses users’ goals and motivations possibly going beyond the product’s primary purpose, yet somehow connected to it via personal or cultural associations the opportunity for the creation of reflective meaning is greatly enhanced.

          Understanding Users’ Goals on Three Levels
“We can readily apply Alan Cooper's goal-directed design methods, which include personas, goals, and scenarios, to the problems of visceral, behavioral, and reflective design.” We clearly need good ways to understand users’ needs at each of the three levels of processing, translate that understanding into clear requirements, and finally, translate those requirements into clear directions for developers. Luckily, at least one such method already exists and is in relatively widespread use though to date, usage of this method has focused primarily on the behavioral level. We can readily apply Alan Cooper’s goal-directed design methods, which include personas, goals, and scenarios, to the problems of visceral, behavioral, and reflective design. Most UX practitioners are familiar with the concept of personas composite user archetypes that we construct from behavioral data that we have gathered during user interviews and field observations. We give our personas realistic names, faces, and personalities to foster user empathy within a product team. However, practitioners may be somewhat less aware that a critical element of personas beyond capturing typical user behavior patterns and roles is capturing user motivations in the form of specific goals. In fact, the three types of goals that Cooper’s methods enumerate largely anticipated the concerns of Norman’s three levels of processing. Experience goals help describe how a persona wants to feel while using a product. These goals provide focus for a product’s visual and aural characteristics, its interactive feel such as animated transitions and the snap ratio of a physical button and its industrial design by providing insights into persona motivations that express themselves at the visceral level. For example:
• Feel smart or in control.
• Have fun.
• Feel cool or hip or relaxed.
• Remain focused and alert.

UX practitioners must translate persona experience goals into form, motion, and auditory elements that communicate the proper affect, emotion, and tone. Mood or inspiration boards are a useful tool for defining the tonal expectations of personas. “End goals should be among the most significant factors in determining the overall product experience.” End goals describe what a persona wants or needs to accomplish. A product or service can help accomplish such goals directly or indirectly. These goals are the focus of a product’s interaction design, information architecture, and the more functional aspects of industrial design. Because of the influence of behavioral processing on both visceral and reflective responses, end goals should be among the most significant factors in determining the overall product experience. For example:
• Clear my desk before I leave for home.
• Make good business decisions based on my data.
• Find problems proactively before they become critical.
• Buy what I need and get out of here.

UX practitioners must translate end goals into a product’s behaviors, tasks, look, and feel. Context—day in the life—scenarios, and cognitive walkthroughs are effective tools for exploring users’ goals and mental models, which facilitate appropriate behavioral design. Life goals describe a persona’s long-term desires, motivations, and self-image attributes, which cause the persona to connect with a product. These goals form the focus for a product’s overall design, strategy, and branding. For example: • Live the good life. • Succeed in my ambitions to…. • Be a connoisseur of…. • Be attractive, popular, or respected by my peers. UX practitioners must translate life goals into high-level system capabilities, formal design concepts, and brand strategy. Mood boards and context scenarios can be helpful in exploring different aspects of product concepts, and broad ethnographic research and cultural modeling are critical for discovering users’ behavior patterns and deeper motivations.

         Using Scenarios to Explore Users’ Goals
“Scenarios establish the primary touch-points a persona may have with a new or redesigned product over time, illuminating modes of use, user mental models, and user attitudes toward the product.” A product’s UX team can use context scenarios to help bridge the gap between personas and their goals and create a design that meets their needs and desires. Context scenarios describe the broader context for persona usage patterns, behaviors, and reactions to a product design, including environmental, organizational, and cultural factors. These scenarios establish the primary touch-points a persona may have with a new or redesigned product over time, illuminating modes of use, user mental models, and user attitudes toward the product. Two related scenario-based techniques do a particularly good job of addressing all three types of goals experience, end, and life goals because they help recast the problem as designing an ideal experience rather than a technology based solution.
• Pretending it’s magic - If a product were magic, how would it do X, so a persona would be perfectly satisfied? If, technically, we can’t do it that way, how close can we get?
• Pretending it’s human - In a similar situation, or context, what ideal response would a persona expect from a human?

Remember, understanding goals is about understanding human motivations more than it is about understanding specific tasks, which can change as technology changes. In line with Norman’s model, top-level user motivations include
• Visceral motivations - how a user wants to feel
• Behavioral motivations - what a user wants to do
• Reflective motivations - who a user wants to be

Using personas, goals, and scenarios provides one potential key to unlocking the power of visceral, behavioral, and reflective design, and bringing them together into a harmonious whole. While some of our best designers seem to understand and act upon the interrelationships between these aspects of design almost intuitively, consciously designing for all levels of human cognition and emotion offers tremendous potential for creating more satisfying and delightful user experiences.

Letters On The Asthetics Education Of Man ( Friedrich Schiller)

A generic summary of the argument in Friedrich Schiller’s Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man would be: in order for a person to become a moral and rational being she must pass through an aesthetic education in which she harmonizes with herself and thus becomes Free to exercise her rational will univocally. The passage often quoted as a summation of Schiller’s major theme in this work is: “It is through Beauty that we arrive at Freedom.” This passage, since I first encountered it, has been one of the few essential thoughts I carry with me through life. My superficial knowledge of Schiller, through only this famous quote and the above general argument, has had a disproportionate effect on me. When Conor Heaton, a friend from Chicago, recommended Schiller’s Letters to me, I was thrilled for the opportunity to read the entirety of the work and to test my own personalized version of the idea against Schiller’s initial conception.

Schiller, a German Romantic dramatist, poet, and essayist, wrote his Lettersduring the height of France’s Reign of Terror. Like so many other Romantic thinkers across the globe, Schiller cried for joy at the French Revolution’s liberation of the human spirit. But, like artists and thinkers generations before and after him, Schiller suffered great disappointment in the aftermath of the revolution when power and fear destroyed the ideals of Justice and Freedom that had sparked the revolution. In some ways his argument stems from the idea that if the revolutionaries were perfectly educated in the ideas of aesthetics they would have been able to escape their own power struggles and thus have been able to create a Just and Free French State. Instead, the French Revolutionaries, whose only education on and exposure to government came from the monarch they so despised, exponentially replicated the atrocities of the very kind they dethroned. In doing so they turned the country into an irrational, immoral mess. It is a theme not isolated to 1790’s France, and though Schiller was influenced by the events of his time, he is also picking up an ambitious argument first articulated in the Western tradition two thousand years before his time. The idea of an aesthetic education as essential to a moral and rational life was originally Plato’s. In setting out to create the ideal civilization in his Republic, Plato’s characters conclude that banning books and particular artists (including Homer) will be necessary to ensure that young men are properly trained to appreciate Beauty. Plato’s characters felt that scenes from The Iliad about conniving and jealous gods were bad influences on young men, who may look to the gods as examples. And works that espoused ideas or styles that did not create the harmony in the soul essential to becoming a fully realized Moral man were not worthy of being taught. While laying the groundwork for regarding Beauty as essential to the human experience, Plato also put forward the first argument for censorship.(If one finds themselves scoffing at this idea or comparing Plato to Hitler, it may be wise to remember that a major component of America’s current education system assumes that those being educated cannot decipher the language and tone of Huckleberry Finn without intolerable harm, or read of Holden Caulfield’s rampant moral downfall and sexual escapades without falling into decadence, and that 12 year olds cannot be closer than 100 yards from a condom without instigating rampant uncontrolled sexual orgies. Plato’s excuse is that he didn’t have the benefit of thousands of years of education research proving his instincts incorrect.) Schiller never grounds his ideas by discussing or suggesting particular texts that may be suitable for an aesthetic education. His tendency to speak in shifting abstractions has cost him a more prominent position in the greater philosophical tradition. But if The Aesthetic Education of Man is read as it was written – as an artist trying to convince the world that Art and Beauty are essential to a Free and Moral civilization – then it is a wonderful and essential work whose philosophical consistency is far less important than its general spirit. Schiller’s argument itself is also only a small component of why this text is so engaging. He never stops reaching. His every sentence embodies the Romantic belief that truth, pure Truth, is at our fingertips, and with persistence It can be held in our palms. His style fluctuates between art and philosophy. Schiller has no fear of spreading his ideas, and his grandiose style represents perfectly the abundance of thought that was flowing out of Romantic Germany during his lifetime. He makes grand and provocative historical claims: “The Romans, we know, had first to exhaust their strength in civil wars . . . before we see Greek art triumphing over the rigidity of their character . . . And among the Arabs too the light of culture never dawned until the vigor of their warlike spirit had relaxed.” He states complex ideas in beautiful little statements: “We know that Man is neither exclusively matter nor exclusively spirit. Beauty, therefore, is the consummation of this humanity.” And there is much more beyond this in Schiller’s Letters. He propounds a theory of Beauty and just how it can harmonize mankind and allow moral and rational men to flourish, and so on. Despite the sheer joy I take in reading and contemplating Schiller, I fear that his abstract and overzealous style may have hurt the cause in support of which his passages are nonetheless so often invoked, i.e. the idea that only through an aesthetic education can a human become a fully rational being. I believe that Beauty in the form of art evokes ideas and lessons essential to functioning as a fully realized rational being. Without such an education and understanding the imagination is stilted and the world is seen only as what it appears to be and certain conditions of mankind are seen as inevitable if not acceptable. An aesthetic education is superior to a purely historical education because whereas in a historical education we accumulate new facts with an old and consistent epistemological system, the lessons and ideas taken from artistic beauty invade the mind, transforming our way of understanding, and becoming components of our rationality itself. A historical education teaches us what we see; an aesthetic education liberates us from what we see, teaching us how many visions there are and have been, and finally, to choose. An aesthetic education will ultimately teach us to reach for what is right and Just in the universal sense.

My claims above may sound weak because, like Schiller, I purposefully avoid specifics. I don’t want to subject myself to the criticism of historical examples. All I can refer to as a general example is the power of myths and literature on humankind through history and how civilization often looks to the ideals of Myths to renew our failing spirits. Whether those Myths are Lincoln or Aragon, when they are embodied through education and recalled as universal examples of The Good, we are able to reach out of our restrictive temporal worldviews to envision and to aspire to create civilizations (and citizens) as Perfect as we can imagine.