Emotional Design

Premises:

• People have emotional reactions to products
• Emotions prodcue neurotransmitters in the brain that affect performance
• Performance suffers if people have negative emotions about products and activities
• Good emotional design can overcome minor functional problems - people invest the time to develop work arounds
• Thus, emotional issues cannot be ignored
• Trade offs in usability may be necessary to insure good emotional response

Types of negative emotions:

• Fear
• Disgust
• Hate
• Anger
• Disappointment
• Others?

Types of positive emotions:

• Comfort
• Happiness
• Humor
• Pride
• Hope
• Others?

Are the following experiences emotionally negative or positive? Why?

• Using rapid transit
• Visiting NYC
• Using a very big roller coaster
• Using porta potty

Give some examples of designs in which emotion trumps function?

• Examples from Norman?
• Cars:
  • SUVs in general
  • VW bug
  • Hummer

Three levels of mental (cognitive) processing:

• Visceral - unconscious, automatic, instinctual response based on our evolutionary experience
  
• Behavioral - unconscious, experience based and goal oriented, developed through practice, e.g. accomplishment in skill development, harmony with expectations, good fit
  
• Reflective - conscious, personal significance, social meaning, self reflective

Discussion:

• Does this concept make sense, from your personal experience?
  
• Discuss the examples given above with respect to Visceral, Behavioral, Reflective levels
  
• Holes in the theory? Give some examples of breaking the "rules" and why that strategy works
  
• How can emotional design be applied to the Porta Potty problem?
  
  • What emotions?
    
  • Visceral level
    
  • Behavioral level
    
  • Reflective
    
• Is design for function less important than emotional design?
  

Emotional Mapping

• Graphic representation that links emotional response to specific formal qualities and features and general experiences
• Could use many different images of a building or product
• Techniques - larger photo with sections cropped out, lead lines, overlaid colors, comparisons with other examples
• Example - Jewish Museum in Berlin

Further avenues of investigation (see Architecture and Society website. Read the articles on "Architecture as Signification" and study the analysis method):

• Social meaning - shared among "social worlds", e.g. color, counter culture
• Self reflection - the "looking glass self"
• Semiotics - science of "signs", e.g. branding, theming

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