Book Reflection 3 — “Emotional Designs — Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things”
The Book I selected was “Emotional Designs — Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things” by Donald A. Norman. The theme of this book is about the important connection between emotions and consumers. Mainly tells how emotions affect consumers’ opinions and preferences for designed products, and how to use the right emotional factors to design engaging products. Roman believes that emotion should always be combined with rational decision-making, taking a more consumer-centric approach.
The reason I chose this book is because its title is very attractive to me, and I really want to know about this aspect because I often show different emotions to different things in life. For example, I take the subway every day, but I hate taking the subway because the subway environment is very bad. I use my mobile phone every day, and I really like to use my mobile phone to watch short videos. I do the same thing every day, but my emotions towards the subway and my mobile phone are completely opposite. I want to know why different emotions are produced and have a new understanding of emotional design.
My overall impression of this book is very good, I think it is very useful and I can learn a lot from it. Because this book contains many interesting examples of emotional design, you can learn how to design something that is attractive and can be widely liked. It made me understand that design needs to take into account many factors, and the designed products need to have many contents such as style and practicality. Before reading the book, I thought that designing good products only required enough time and imagination, but after reading the book, I found that designing good products requires multiple aspects of thinking and research. I think this knowledge is very useful. I can actually apply what I learned in the book to our group’s prototype.
After reading the book I gained two main insights, the first insight is that there are three levels of emotional processing, namely visceral, behavioral, and reflective. Each level contains some unique features and design concepts. Visceral level is mainly about design appearance. It focuses on the visual impact of the product on people and can quickly attract people. It can make the product likable in appearance through strange shapes or bright colors. Behavioral level is mainly about design experience. It focuses on whether the product has great usability or fun, and makes customers like these products through use. Reflective level is mainly the customer’s feelings about the product, which is very important because it determines whether the customers will experience your product again. Applying the three levels in emotional design can help you understand customers’ feelings and influencing factors about the product. In emotional design, when three different levels are related to each other, Delight will occur, which is crucial to the designed product because when a product can have Delight, it will be attractive and liked by everyone. To design a good product, these three levels are indispensable.
The second insight is important methods for emotional design. The reading mentions some very useful methods of emotional design. When designing products, you can use some color contrasts or special styles to stimulate customers’ senses and make customers have a strong interest in the designed products. Customization and personalization are a great way to provide different experiences for different customers and make them feel unique. To use emotional design correctly, observation is also essential. Use observation to determine what your customers want from your product, as everyone thinks differently. Instead of designing a product from an individual’s perspective, you’re designing a product from the customer’s perspective and considering their needs. Applying good methods to emotional design can lead to good products that attract customers.
Combined with the book and the group activities from the previous class, I think Lego is a great example of emotional design. Lego comes in different colors and shapes and is very playable because you can put any brick together. The students all enjoyed the process of building Lego and everyone liked the product. The first part of the activity was for us to build our own models, every student has a different design, it can be seen that LEGO has a very strong personalization ability. After reading this book I understand why Lego is so popular.
