registered authors login here For more on PMWiki, see pmwiki.org |
Note that half this set of readings is online, and the other half is in the coursepack. norman sees it. (referring to the noretrander's reading), that there are things long proven, people are resistant to accept. this outlines one. that having some emotional investment is really influencial for absorbing and remembering. thus, if a tea pot does something to you viscerally, you're more likely to use it, be comfortable with it, ... . but the inverse is actually the most important. that emotional triggering, also opens other doors in your brain much wider. (of course robert could surely go into much more detail) but being engaged (getting people involved, overcoming the inertia of detachment , seems like a good goal for interactivity) is like adding baking soda to dough. it's certainly not what makes bread bread, but it does make bread more bread. "The design should not get in the way." I love this stuff. Norman understands the sensuous nature of the things we use, and how conscientious design enhances--not supplants the need for--usability and functionality. Just like a freshly waxed car, a well-designed book cover can make the pages turn much faster. It's important that aesthetic enhancements like these are simply aesthetic--that they don't directly touch the tools used in the experience. The same engine is inside the car, and the words in the book are no different. It's the subtle details on the margins that enhance the experience. I'm saying this because sometimes, designers are too full of themselves to remember what their job is, and they turn a tool into an unusable work of art. The example I love to talk about is the original iMac. The designers tried to make it appealing to new computer users, and that's a very honest goal. But in making it more attractive, they made it the most frustrating piece of computer hardware I've ever used. They removed the disk drive because they thought it was tacky. "This computer is way too forward-looking to have such an archaic technology." Fine. But people still used them back then, and Apple put no viable alternative on the iMac. No CD writer. No Ethernet port. "People in the future will use infrared!" First of all, we aren't. Second, and more important, nobody used it then. The thing crashed all the time, and because a reset button on the front panel would have made it less sleek, you had to get out a paper clip and stick it into a hole on the side of the box. And then there was the mouse, which fit poorly into your hand, had a very short cord, and was perfectly round, so you could never tell where the button was without looking. But it sure did look cool and futuristic. That's good, because as Norman writes, "negative affect can make it harder to do even easy tasks," and if the iMac were ugly, it would only make it even more frustrating to use. So I guess the main point of this spiel is that aesthetic enhancements to products should not touch the core of their functionality, but instead, only the details on the periphery: the cover of the book, the wax on the paint, the transluscent aqua-colored shell of your computer. When you read Norman in chronological order, this point is driven home. As Rob points out below, "Emotional Design" is very much Norman's answer, 20 years later, to his own writing in "Everyday Things." He even says so in the intro to the book (both are worth reading the whole book). That's why I put these two readings back-to-back. For years, Norman's been a real crank (but a crank who's right) about usability. The emotional book is a big turnaround for him, and fills in a big hole in his thinking, to me. Yes I agree with Norman that aesthetics play an important role to the way we users attune and respond to an object, however, I could not help but begin to wonder what factors people use to judge aesthetic value (that exist outside the realm intrinsic to internal form & function). I understand that the author prizes design that is in harmony with the function of the object, however fashion and time seem to exert their influence over our aesthetic choices even in spite of a designer's careful attention to form and function. I think of the notion of when something begins to look dated to our eyes. Why does this happen when at one point this design was obviously viewed as fitting and pertinent? The object itself hasn't changed nor its function, and yet our values and the way we respond may have. Alice, it's the difference between timelessness and trendiness. I think we know trendy designs when we see them, even when they're in their heyday. Again, I think the iMac is a good example. Or, as proof that this applies not only to technology, just look at distressed jeans. Those things are the acid wash of the '00s. For me, I think it comes down to the fact that functionality lasts, fashion doesn't. Sometimes, however, fashion makes such a useful improvement that it becomes functional. For example, the hand-shaped curve of a good weighted knife is fashionable in some periods, but not in others. The form changes slightly, but the balance remains the same. So it keeps coming back again and again and again. Norman makes a point about the design of some doors. They may look stylish but should you push or pull, on the left or right? Of course, after someone has successfully opened the door, it may be obvious. But it reminds me of some design issues with Apple. Apple is the best at creating beautiful looking designs but interestingly enough, the most frequently asked question we get in our ITS Multimedia Mac lab is whether our Mac G5 towers have a CD drive and how does one open them. (The CD tray is opened only with the top right key on the keyboard). When we first got an iMac (flat- panel with the Pixar lamp design) I spent ten minutes just trying to find the power switch. Once you know how something works, it's no longer an issue but as Norman writes "an object that is beautiful to the core is no better than one this is only pretty if they both lack usability". you may, at first glance, think i'm getting away from Norman's point here, but actually, don't be fooled by cheap imitations. order yours today and receive as our gift to you this free ginsu knife set for only nine ninety nine. actually what Norman's saying can be re-thought of as design is marketting and visa versa. we invest our attention and time, in the same way we invest our cash. what gets us to invest? the iMac example is a good one (whereas Microsoft baffles me. No one could possibly say their products are well designed from either a technical nor aesthetic standpoint, yet the overwhelming majority of users of varying sophistications, buy their stuff.) Whether it's a good thing or not, whether design works or not, that probably doesn't effect its popularity. and popularity is ultimately whether the thing gets preserved or dies forgotten. seems like Norman's emphasis is more on design as a practical factor in usability, rather than that aesthetics make good design shine. with good design, users are more likely to give the time, patience, attention to learn a new tool. with bad design, everylittle difficulty is amplified, until you have such a bad impression of the thing, you avoid it. what do people suppose gives folks the incentive, the patience and interest, to work harder through many awfully designed products? a sewing machine isn't a gorgeous design, but folks figure out how to thread em (ever tried it, it's a nightmare) who don't have to, aren't paid to. My only real qualm with this piece is that I think the argument is made with only a cursory nod at some larger factors that go into design. I think a fairer statement would be "Attractive things work better, all things being equal." I think economic and marketing forces put significant restraints on designers, such that attractiveness cannot be priority 1 (or maybe not even priority 3). I almost felt as though he implies that some designers disregard attractiveness on purpose. If he is suggesting that a designer should tend to remove functionality from a device in order to increase it's attractiveness in a way that makes it more useful overall, then I am not sure I agree with him in some cases. The marginal increase in attractiveness would have to be pronounced. For instance, if someone designed a teapot with a corkscrew sticking out of it, I would be inclined to advocate removal of the corkscrew functionality for the sake of attractiveness. On the other hand, putting all the buttons on the back of my fan would make it look nicer but harder to use. read the rest of the book, I think you'll find that Norman agrees with your qualms. Reading this reminded me of a conversation I once had with a Boston landscape architect who told me that Harvard Square was designed to be chaotic in order to create a sense of danger. The plan was that people would find the space exciting and a little stressful, and consequently move more quickly through it (with the tunnel vision and increased focus of negative affect). I was also reminded of a cafe in my hometown which has a very confusing, stress-inducing process for ordering food. Yet for some reason, people always return to the cafe, usually bringing out-of-town guests, and I've always thought it might be because they feel a sense of pride and accomplishment for having figured out the system. I'm interested in where the line is drawn for this type of purposefully 'bad' design - where does it stop frustrating people and instead begin to stimulate/attract them? I think there's never an excuse for "bad" design. I have trouble believing the Harvard Square story, because if you look at the history of the roads that lead into it, there was little or no design. The square was the result of the meeting of several roads from various colonial towns and villages: Somerville, Cambridge, Watertown, etc. Sometimes design happens as a historical accident like that, and sure, Harvard Square is a mess to get around. But it's not on purpose. There's a line between plan-by-accident and bad design. There are definitely times when you make something appear dangerous, as in some of the knives linked above. But when appearance gets in the way of function, that's bad design, to me. When function means you have to make something ungainly or unmanageable or unattractive, that too is bad design, to me. In some ways "Emotional Design" is an amendment to this week's first reading, "The Design of Everyday Things." Norman spent a good deal of his career railing against designers who crafted beauty at the expense of function. His business partner Jakob Nielsen still adheres to a beauty-last philosophy. It's good to see Norman finally giving aesthetics their due. His science is a bit muddled to me. I'm not sure that cognition should be broken into three flowcharted levels. The brain is vastly more complex and it's a safe bet that its processing is far more parallel than his model implies. And his examples of negative affect producing focus are peculiar. Do buzzing alarms really make workers more focused? Don't they also cause distraction? I'm not convinced that any design should really try to cause negative affect. However I believe Norman's point is more about how good design becomes even more functional when it is pretty. And I think there are many subtle links between cognitive improvements and aesthetic delight. Often one can cause the other. So his point is well taken even if his approach is kind of weird. I'm not sure if anyone else has had a chance to read "The Design of Everyday Things" yet. It's well worth owning this terrific book. One note of caution. His definition of "affordances" is not correct, and he has clarified this in later work. While even the flawed definition is helpful to the novice, I think it's important to learn the more complete and correct version. Affordances, as defined by J. J. Gibson in 1966, are the intersection between an animal (in this case a person) and the environment. They are not a physical property of an object itself because the person must be involved for the action to occur. For example a heavy door affords passage to an adult, but not to children or the elderly. This is a vital factor in design. Also Norman uses perception and affordance interchangeably in a way that may confuse the reader into thinking that affordances must be perceived to exist. That's not true (at least to Gibson's definition and Norman later clarified this). Affordances exist whether they are perceived or not. Our job as designers is to ensure that the affordances we want our users to exploit are obvious, and perhaps those that we'd rather they didn't are well hidden. But we should never forget that they exist because affordances can be exploited by chance, with results that are hopefully fortuitous but potentially disastrous. I've posted two papers by Torenvliet and McGrenere if anyone cares to read more. Despite this issue, I remain an enthusiastic fan of "The Design of Everyday Things." Norman's advice on usability is both entertaining and informative. I was happy to have the opportunity to read it again. amen. Norman is great. I read most of design of everyday things before I got to ITP and it’s neat to read ‘emotion and design’ as the continuation to his earlier ideas. He comes across as so reasonable and down to earth it makes me wonder if he isn’t slipping something by. Everything comes back to emotion. If a particular tool makes us feel good we will forgive certain usability or design flaws. This ‘feeling good’ is completely relative to the individual. A certain item may make one person feel good because it is easy to use and someone else feel good because it is pleasurable to look at. Function is not necessarily the primary ratings scale. Since there is no single proper way to use anything, people will overlook glaring usability issues with an item if it balances out on the aesthetic end. Of course there are always the manufacturer’s suggestions on proper use but with multiple affordances, re-appropriation is common. I think it’s interesting that designers may not want to make a tool which generates too much positive affect. It could be argued that creative is a positive of any task or conversely too much creativity, say with something like surgery, may be a negative. In that case the implement might be better suited to have less positive affect. Design is not supposed to be positive all the time approach seems logical at first, I totally agree that stress and creativity and responsibility are all related but Norman himself tells everything in such a black-white situation that a person-me in this instance- is looking for more statistical facts. Still, emotionally I feel myself on the same territory as Norman when he describes design as a process that should aim local audiences, I think it is the same path we are shifting on the web, building applications for minority(is one of the attributes of new generation, and the other one is open APIs, because when you begin to build an application for majority there is always be an usability or a design issue, but if you just find out what is the expectation for the minority that you are building your application it would always be more accurate. I have a good friend, a lighting designer, who taught me most of what I know about lighting. He once said to me, "If they're looking at the lights, then Fannie Flagg ain't doing her job," meaning that if the audience is paying attention to the design, then the actors aren't engaging the audience enough. I think the converse is also true: if they're looking at the lights, then the lighting designer's not doing her job. To me, design should make things work better on an almost unconscious level. There are moments when it should take focus, as in the early moments of a Merchant/Ivory movie, when you notice the lushness of the settings, or the product displays at the Apple Store, where the product seems so sensuous that you feel almost dirty just touching it, and you really really want it. But then design needs to fade into the background and support whatever it's there for. The iMac mouse from above is a good example. It was over-designed. Apple learned their lesson and went back to a form factor that disappeared into your hand again. The new mice are less showy, but they work better. They're still attractive, but because they're a better balance of beauty and function, you don't pay too much attention to either. That's good design, to me. A good designer should be humble, make things that really work and make people happy, and not care if they know who made the thing. rob, what a useful insight! helps so much to think of "emotional design" as an ammendment to "everyday things". more than just chronological, it's like a retort, almost an answer to the reader of "everyday things". takes a variant approach of the same general subject (but without nearly the detail). Judson, one objection to what you said about Microsoft design: they make great hardware. My optical IntelliMouse is the best piece of computer hardware I've ever owned. It looks great, feels great, and works more reliably than any peripheral I've used. I was the first kid on my block with an optical mouse...that was five years ago, and it's still going strong. However, I did try out the wireless version of the same thing, and there was too much lag. As a left-handed person, I cannot disagree more. Microsoft is hopelessly right-handed about their design of their mice. IN general, I find their work to be too Efficient for its own good. This is purely my own opinion, of course. But I agree with Judson below. True...I did not consider that. They do make some ambidextrous mice, although most are form-fitting. matt, sorry if i wasn't being clear. microsoft essentially owes their success to their software. microsoft mice don't fill 90% (or whatever it is) of the market. the hardware is a smaller faction in a huge company. what seems odd, though microsoft software is really badly designed (as in un-intuitive interfaces, inconstistencies and just plain aesthetics) but the software still controls the overwhelming majority of the market. odd that folks are motivated to buy/use products that aren't really out to please them or make their lives any easier. (the big exception being ditching DOS with (i think) Win98, but probably because raw processing speed would cover for many of the innefficiencies in the programming) price used to be the issue, convenience of buying it/finding stores, is another. (not worth much speculation though) but strange these things could so drastically trump design. I understood what you meant, Judson. It's just that the opportunity to praise Microsoft presents itself so rarely...I had to take it. --- I agree with the Norman readings. The most important thing that I got out of the "Designof Everyday Things (DOET)" is that design should be visible. So many times, the aesthetic of the design is prioritized over it's function. Also, design should be intuitive (like the door examples). In contrast, too much functions can hinder the usefulness of the object. I believe one possible solution to this could be that similar objects can have the same functions, so that learning becomes uniform. An example would be a cell phone interface and touch pad. Most of them are similar regardless of how old the model is or the design. In any case, one should keep the design simple. All in all, I'm glad I own the book for Intro to Industrial Design. In "Attractive Things Work Better," Norman makes a good point that people/users tend to forgive design flaws when the object is attractive. This is true, I believe for the older Apple computers (the IBooks and IMacs that came in funky colors). I have also experience a coulple of malfunctions with my Powerbook within the first 3 months. My speakers had to be replaced. I took it in, and because AppleCare also reinforced that my product would be in good working condition eventually, I wasn't upset. Partly because of the design of the Powerbook, and it's packaging. The same went for my 3rd Generation Ipod. The battery drains faster than the newer ones, but since I love the design of the older one with the red lights (keys), I will never sell it. On the other hand, I used to own one of the 1st generation G5 PowerMacs, and there was something wrong with the videocard. I had to take it back to the Apple store several times before they replaced it. I ended up selling it because I hated having to ask someone to help me lug 50 lbs. to the Apple Store everytime. I don't know if attractive things work better, but I do agree that people forgive the device or object if it is more attractive. "The hidden danger is to neglect areas that are not easily addressed in the framework of science and engineering." This is a good point, and one that illustrates the difference between arts and sciences; in one vagaries are allowed and encouraged to provide context and content for discussion - in the other, they are the goal to be banished. This is very interesting: "Negative affect focuses the mind, leading to better concentration. In cases of an immediate threat this is good, for it concentrates processing power upon the danger. When creative problem solving is required this is bad, for it leads to narrow, tunnel vision. Positive affect broadens the thought processes, making it more easily distractible. When the problem requires focus, this is bad, but when the problem is best addressed through creative, out-of-the-box thinking, then this is precisely what is needed." I wonder where he drew these comparisons from, if not psychology. Negative valence (narrow, focused) vs. positive valence (broad, creative). Interesting! "Tools that are meant to support serious, concentrated effort, where the task is well specified and the approach relatively well understood are best served by designs that emphasize function and minimize irrelevancies. Here the normal tensions of the situation are beneficial." Sounds like systems administration to me! Having working extensively in GUI'd and terminal-only systems it's interesting to see my preferences for the latter; I wonder if I had had more experience with the systems in a playing scenario if I would have preferred GUI's? "To be truly beautiful, wondrous, and pleasurable, the product has to fulfill a useful function, work well, and be usable and understandable." - I love this - heretical indeed! I would rephrase it, however: To be [ready to sell to consumers] the product has to fulfill a useful function, work well, and be usable and understandable." [[jk1786] | josh] I understand that the technical translation of affordances was handle wrong in the first book, I do understand Norman's intent. To make better designs we need to view the object as something that can possess certain qualities that make interaction a pleasure for the user. I think Norman is one of the reasons I eventually came to be here at ITP, as a graphic designer I could only affect a limited range of peoples experience with a product... packaging may convince someone to buy or logos may reinforce brand but good, well thought out industrial and interactive design affect a personal relationship between the end user and product in a much more profound way. I have uploaded an audio correction from Norman on affordances from the Voyager CD on his book. If anyone would like to take a look at some Norman video clips let me know... (I know, sadly geeky to have Donald Norman video clips) http://www.bamford.net/pComp/sounds/norman_afford.wav [[db1409] | david] I appriciate the concept of "Human centered design" is a very much. As Norman said, emotion matters a lot. But in reality, not all emtions share equal importance. I think that maybe because of the evolution process, people concern more about the negative feedback of bad feelings. So designers should consider users' feeling. The more the design affects emtion, the high the effeciency is. And In this article, Norman mention color displays. Color is really one of the most important factors that affect emotion. But actually, everybody has a different taste. That is why we have so many different kinds of lights, chairs, clocks, etc. To solve this, I think, designs should be able to detect human emotion and make reactions to emotions. But this is really difficult. Chunxi cj520 |
