Donald Norman's presentation on 'Emotional Design' explains a base understanding into how psychology is used in product design. This is to demonstrate how emotion is provoked through a human's interaction with a product. The design phisophy that Norman speaks about is to design for not only function and aesthetics but to also design for an emotional response.
Norman's first example is Philippe Starck's juicer which he explains that the beauty of the design means he uses it as a show piece in his home rather than to actually funtionally use the product to make juice. He justifies this further by explaining that he has the special edition gold plated juicer which actually comes with instructions not to make juice with it as the acid will damage the gold plate finish. This point sums up how this product, especially the gold plated model, is designed for an emotional response rather than for functional purposes.
The global cutting knife is the next product that Norman chooses to talk about. He explains how the form of this knife is beautiful to look at as well as feeling great to handle. The knife's asthetics make it look as though it would function precisely, and it does so which leads Norman to describe this product as beautiful as well as functional.
Donald Norman went on to talk about how the pyschological state of a person affects the way they think. He uses an example of a study where a psychologist asked two groups of students to solve a problem involving connecting two pieces of string together that cannot reach each other. The first group was told "this is an IQ test and determines how well you will do in life", the students were unable to solve the problem. The second group were given a box of candy before being given the problem and were able to solve it. Norman justifies these results by explaining how axiety leads to a psychological response which focuses you and makes you as "depth first", where as if you are happy, your brain allows you to think as a "breath first" problem solver causing you to think "outside the box".
These aspects of human psychology can be used when designing products to try provoke an emotional response from the target user, therefore creating products that are "beautiful" or "fun" to interactive with. This allows for more successful products that the user will want to hold on to for a long time. I do however think it is important to remember that individuals react differently to each other so designers can only predict the response of their target user.
No comments:
Post a Comment