Both Richard Seymour and Don Norman are prolific designers in their own right. In the videos for this week’s assignment they speak about emotional design, telling stories about products and experiences and how they affect us emotionally. For this week’s blog post write about your thoughts on their ideas of emotional design. Give an account of emotional design that you connect to in your own life.
It was very interesting to me to hear about the experiment with the students that if suggested the box of candy were able to solve the problem, while people who were put under pressure were not as this pressure made them anxious and prevented them from thinking outside the box.
Hence, appropriate design might actually encourage creativity.
- Visceral (beautiful, neat) : good font and color (also pretty car)
- behavioral (control, UX basically, sensual feeling) : teapot
- reflective (no control over what you do, however looks over and tells you some feedback) : attention-attracting car
Do you think beauty? Or do we feel beauty? Thats an interesting question to me. Because sometimes I notice that when, for example, using my iPhone with all the smooth transitions or when browsing through beautifully and intuitive websites I find myself almost “feeling” the beauty of the design.
The example of the slowly going-out lights: feels natural, feels nice. The cinema! The sense of anticipation is exciting! This observation was so eye-opening.
Some notes:
Poignancy: the triggering of a strong emotional response
Pathos, triumph: something new, excitement
Intrinsic & Extrinsic beauty
“We see things not as they are, but as we are.” – i found this quote very interesting as it indeed seems like we do subconsciously tend to find things in design that we would sympathize with, things that would make us feel excited through anticipation on just visual appeal. Design could be indeed more beautiful if it resonates with something we find important in our lives.