How People Feel & Think: Design, Emotion, Worldview & Openness
Reflection on the semester so far in How People Work
Understanding Emotion
The opening statement from Johnathan Chapman: “the aim of design is not to make everything easy for users” was both shocking and intriguing. The past grueling one and a half years at CMU Design have hammered into us that design should be efficient, elegant, and most of all easy. From that point onward, we were taken on a journey into the purpose of emotion in design, reminding us that design is not just a touch-and-go experience but something that should be rich in feeling, interaction, and memorability. Good design recognizes that emotions are not just constant states subdivided into black and white categories because, much like anything in the world, someone’s state of mind is fluid and ever-changing. In addition, good design unfolds similarly to a story and creates a unique and memorable experience for the user rather than streamlining the interaction to prioritize functionality.
This principle of leading people throughout a design has been used in our projects as Chelsea has placed design elements in ways that utilize eye movement and story-telling for her C studio projects. Similarly, in E studio, Spoorthi had to consider the multiple contrasting emotions she would instill in her visitors as they walked through her museum exhibit.
Contemplating Worldview
Attending a university immersed with over 7000 international students and a substantial 30% Asian population, at CMU we’ve been exposed to countless new perspectives and worldviews from diverse peers, having the opportunity to understand how one’s cultural norms, backgrounds, and experiences influence their behavior and thoughts. Following the concept of a hermeneutic loop, our worldviews are constantly evolving. For instance, Spoorthi hadn’t known about the concept of Feng Shui before Chelsea mentioned it to her as a consideration that people in China account for when designing their house, exemplifying how one’s worldview drives their purposeful design decisions. Hajira Qazi’s lecture taught us the critical significance of considering our audience before creating designs as well as being aware of our own subjectivity, and not imposing our worldview on others to ensure the end design is effective, meaningful, and synonymous with the users values and beliefs.
Striving to better understand each other, we compared worldviews, realizing how similar we are — both raised in an immigrant family where hard work is valued, attending competitive schools where we establish close friendships, and maintain realistic yet pessimistic paradigms that are rooted in science-based rational thinking.
Openness
Hillary Carey pointed out that often times in design our mindsets are closed off, not considering the broad scope of people we are designing for. For instance,the default profile (unmarked persona) for many designers remains a middle-aged white male where design is biased against females such as the ineffective design of car air cushions, comprising protection for female drivers. Similarly, the necessity of openness transfers to solving systemic racism. Hillary’s new perspective to approaching design from a structural rather than individual view — considering “racial inequality” rather than “racism” — is something we both wish to explore more in our studio projects.
As designers, instead of simply developing education programs to provide unnecessary training, Chelsea and Spoorthi hope to disrupt biased systems, providing people with actual resources for success.
Concluding Thoughts
As designers, after these insightful lectures, we recognized the importance of considering user’s worldview, emotional responses, and openness in our design thinking. We hope to tangibly implement these human-centered design principles into our studio projects and projects in the workforce.
