Emotional Design

Donald A. Norman, Emotional Design: Why we love (or hate) everyday things (Basic Books, 2004), 257 pp.

When Israeli scientist Noam Tractinsky first heard of studies in Japan that ATM machines with an attractive arrangement of buttons were perceived as functioning better than machines with an unattractive arrangement, he was skeptical. So Tractinsky designed his own experiments, and found that he practically-minded Israelis also claimed that aesthetic appeal made machines and tools more functional. In Emotional Design , Donald Norman, who has split his career between academia (most recently, in Northwestern University’s computer science department) and industry (including a stint with Apple Computers), sets out to explain this connection between aesthetics and efficiency. He believes that the connection is emotion. “Emotion makes you smart,” he argues. Because emotions are always involved in our responses to things, and because beautiful objects evoke pleasing emotions, they shape not only the way we perceive the world but the way we operate in the world. An elegant tool is more efficient because it is more pleasing. He explains that we process reality not only cognitively (or reflectively, as he puts it), but viscerally and behaviorally, and the visceral takes the lead. Norman also explores the emotional impact of films, questions about robotics, and ends with the declaration that “we are all designers.” Emotional Design mixes cognitive science, computer science, design theory, and epistemology, with rich and appealing results.