Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things (2005) - Plot & Excerpts
This is the first book I’ve read on design. I like the focus on the importance of emotions. The first four chapters were interesting to me, then I hit a dead zone and skimmed chapters 5-7, but I enjoyed the epilogue. I’m sure I will look at products in a new way after this.Also, I like to find arguments against our crappy school system and ways to improve it, so this caught my eye:p. 205 Robot tutors have great potential for changing the way we teach. Today’s model is far too often that of a pedant lecturing at the front of the classroom, forcing students to listen to material they have no interest in , that appears irrelevant to their daily lives. Lectures and textbooks are the easiest way to teach from the point of view of the teacher, but the least effective for the learner. The most powerful learning takes place when well-motivated students get excited by a topic and then struggle with the concepts, learning how to apply them to issues they care about. Yes, struggle: learning is an active, dynamic process, and struggle is a part of it. But when students care about something the struggle is enjoyable. This is how great teaching has always taken place—not through lecturing, but through apprenticeship, coaching, and mentoring. This is how athletes learn. This is the essence of the attraction of video games, except that in games, what students learn is of little practical value. These methods are well known in the learning sciences, where they are called problem-based, inquiry-learning, or constructivist.tHere is where emotion plays its part. Students learn best when motivated, when they care. They need to be emotionally involved, to be drawn to the excitement of the topic. This is why examples, diagrams and illustrations, videos and animated illustrations are so powerful. Learning need not be a dull and dreary exercise, not even learning about what are normally considered dull and dreary topics: every topic can be made exciting, every topic excites the emotions of someone, so why not excite everyone? It is time for lessons to become alive, for history to be seen as a human struggle, for students to understand and appreciate the structure of art, music, science, and mathematics. How can these topics be made exciting? By making them relevant to the lives of each individual student. This is often most effective by having students put their skills to immediate application. Developing exciting, emotionally engaging, and intellectually effective learning experiences is truly a design challenge worthy of the best talent in the world.tRobots, machines, and computers can be of great assistance in instruction by providing the framework for motivated, problem-based learning. Computer learning systems can provide simulated worlds in which students can explore problems in science, literature, history, or the arts. Robot teachers can make it easy to search the world’s libraries and knowledge bases. Human teachers will no longer have to lecture, but instead can spend their time as coaches and mentors, helping to teach not only the topic, but also how best to learn, so that the students will maintain their curiosity through life, as well as the ability to teach themselves when necessary. Human teachers are still essential, but they can play a different, much more supportive and constructive role than they do today.
The first (and larger) part of Emotional Design is classic Norman: thorough analysis, dissection, and reflection on why and how the design of different things affects us. This part gets into some fascinating ideas that can definitely help any kind of designer make a better product. There's no shortage of theories put forth (with good backing) for why and how we connect with things.Norman breaks down our emotional reaction and connection to different things into three groups: visceral, behavioral, & reflective. He does a good job citing cases when these three apply and gets across a firm understanding of what makes each up.For the most part, there're plenty of colorful references and products that keep the reader's attention during all this narration. There are a few parts that might be a little dry but they're short and don't really take much away from the overall enjoyment of the book.That's the "traditional" side to the book. But then Mr. Norman seems to venture off into the realm of Sci-Fi near the end of the book when he gets into machines WITH emotions: robots in the future. He cites Isaac Asimov's 4 Laws and really delves into philosophical discussion.Now I personally thought this was great, afterall I just eat up sci-fi and futurist stuff. So for me, this was fun & no great departure from what I usually read; however, I'm not sure it fits in line with the "traditional" reader of this kind of book. For instance, the typical business design student or engineer could gain a great deal from the first half of this book but might feel out of place by the end.Personally I feel the book's a great read with lots of nice tips & ideas. And if you're a designer of anything the book can surely help you grow. Just might not need the last two or so chapters unless you're plannng on building a C3P0 droid in your cellar.
What do You think about Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things (2005)?
In the epilogue of this book, Don Norman expresses his gratitude to a myriad of people who helped him organize many years worth of disparate notes into a cohesive book. For me, ‘Emotional Design’ remained rather disconnected. Not in an altogether bad way, the book reads like the (slightly rambling) classroom lecture from a venerable guru …with the reader left to pull it all together.Norman offers an illuminating model - distinguishing between 3 layers of design: visceral, behavioral and reflective - to understand why people like the objects they do. And like ‘Design of Everyday Things’ he explores this model with numerous fun and apropos examples. But soon the book wanders from discussion of this cognitive model to pondering on the future of design. According to Norman this future will be marked by our increased dependence on smart robots in every facet of life, where the more we grow to depend on these servants of our own making – functionally and emotionally - the more the line between man and robot will become less and less clear. All this talk of material stuff and robotic servitude makes ‘Emotional Design’ a testament to American consumerism and I was moderately disappointed by the lack of freshness here. A worthwhile read from the man who brought us ‘The Design of Everyday Things’, but ultimately one that falls in the category of ‘plane book’. That is, the type of book I read on a plane because I know I’ll have no other escape.
—Andrea
On its face, Emotional Design seems like it would be the perfect thing for me, a book about why design matters. Which it does. Obviously.However, in actually reading it, I encountered some problems, partially on me and partially on Donald A. Norman.For my part, I prefer books that tell stories. For this reason, I find many non-fiction books to be a bit dry for my taste. I fully accept that it's a matter of my personal opinion and not a reflection on the work itself when I read a book that doesn't have a driving narrative and find it somewhat unsatisfying.That said, there are two things that stood out as flaws in the book, which is not a significant number. However, since these two flaws were spread through about three quarters of the page count, it had a seriously deleterious effect on me.First, I feel that entirely too much time is spend justifying the argument. Nearly 200 pages are spent laying out a thesis, detailing points to justify the thesis, listing a point, using an anecdote to illustrate, repeat. This is valid scientific writing, sure, but the point he eventually makes could have been told much more concisely in twenty pages. I don't like it when stories take too long to make their points; it follows that I would be frustrated when a scientific article does the same.Following this lengthy introduction, however, is some very interesting study the thesis he sets forth. For the length of time that he spends on this subject, the read is engrossing and is, in fact, exactly what I was expecting.That is a roundabout way of bringing us to the second problem, which is robots. Now, don't get me wrong, robots are awesome, and I'm not just saying that so that they don't kill me in the first wave of the robo revolution. Nevertheless, when you are writing a book about the emotion of design (which, strangely, seems to be what the subject was intended to be), it doesn't seem sensible to spend half a chapter talking about said topic and then using the rest of the book to talk about all the things that robots might do in the future.The first section on robots was well-justified and informative. It just seems that in researching the information for that section, Norman started thinking about how awesome it would be if robots could do everything. Note the "would, could, might, etc." language there. This isn't a book of futurism, it's a book on design, and it's for laypeople. Talking about how things might be and what they should do is not going to be as useful as talking about the way things are.That's what ultimately unraveled the book for me. Still, it was enjoyable, and to a more scientifically inclined mind or someone who wants to read a book about the future of robots, I can see this being an engrossing read.
—Jesse Bowline
A older, more seasoned Norman revises his old "function over design" paradigm with this book about third-wave design. No longer are design and usability at odds, but rather they complement each other. Why do you feel more confidently when you are well dressed? Why does your car drive a little bit better after a car wash?The first half of the book is a wonderful guide into this merger for the first half of the book. However, it starts delving into movie psychology and robotics about half way through with little explaination as to why. One wonders if Norman just wanted to write about his current fancy.Still, this is another light but intriguing read into the world of product design.
—Eugene
