Full Book Blog: Emotional Design

We only read the first three chapters, so here is the full blog on those.

Summary
The first chapter discusses why attractive things work better. Norman explains how emotions help a person make decisions and how happiness increases thought processes and encourages creative thinking. Tying this into to design, attractive design allows for a more enjoyable experience and helps people figure things out. Norman also discusses the three levels of processing: visceral (the automatic layer), behavioral (everyday behavior layer) and reflective (contemplative layer). He then discusses how the three levels interact with each other and how they relate to focus and creativity.

The second chapter discusses how the different levels of processing work within a design and how they work with and against each other. As stated in the chapter, visceral design is about the initial impact of the product, behavioral about the use and experience, and reflective about understanding, reasoning and interpreting. Norman also discusses the importance of memories, how objects evoke memories and how these memories reflect us. He concludes the chapter by discussing the design of products when taking the three levels of processing into account. He discusses the goals of a product, its fashion and how brands are informative.

Chapter 3 discusses the three levels of design. Visceral design focuses on physical features such as look, feel and sound and is about initial reactions. Behavioral design focuses on function, understandability, usability and physical feel with function being the most important. Reflective design focuses on the meaning of the product, the message the product gives and the culture. Norman also presents a case study on the national football league headset and concludes by comparing the process of design by committee and the process of design by the individual.

Discussion
While I enjoyed the ideas presented in the first three chapters, Norman did start to repeat himself, so I’m glad we did not have to read this entire book. The emotional design Norman describes is an important aspect that I think is oftentimes overlooked.

Norman gives plenty of good examples from automobiles to watches to bottled water to help explain the differences between the three levels of design. I enjoyed the part in chapter 3 about how stores will put the most often bought items at the back of the store. I have pondered over this before, but now I’ll probably always be thinking about it when I visit a new store. I also thought the Xbox advertisement was funny in chapter 2, and I enjoyed the way Norman analyzed it.

Book Reading #30: Emotional Design

Chapter 3
Summary
This chapter discusses the three levels of design. Visceral design focuses on physical features such as look, feel and sound and is about initial reactions. Behavioral design focuses on function, understandability, usability and physical feel with function being the most important. Reflective design focuses on the meaning of the product, the message the product gives and the culture.

Norman also presents a case study on the national football league headset and concludes by comparing the process of design by committee and the process of design by the individual.

Discussion
I think by now Norman has made clear the differences between the three levels of design. He gives plenty of good examples from automobiles to watches to bottled water. I enjoyed the part about how stores will put the most often bought items at the back of the store. I have pondered over this before, but now I’ll probably always be thinking about it when I visit a new store.

Book Reading #27: Emotional Design

Chapter 2
Summary
The second chapter discusses how the different levels of processing work within a design and how they work with and against each other. As stated in the chapter, visceral design is about the initial impact of the product, behavioral about the use and experience, and reflective about understanding, reasoning and interpreting.

Norman also discusses the importance of memories, how objects evoke memories and how these memories reflect us. He concludes the chapter by discussing the design of products when taking the three levels of processing into account. He discusses the goals of a product, its fashion and how brands are informative.

Discussion
This chapter builds on the last chapter, focusing on the memories a product can evoke in a person and how one must take the appearance, use and evoked memories of a product into account while designing it. I thought the Xbox advertisement was funny, and I enjoyed the way Norman analyzed it.

Book Reading #24: Emotional Design

Chapter 1
Summary
This first chapter discusses why attractive things work better. Norman explains how emotions help a person make decisions and how happiness increases thought processes and encourages creative thinking. Tying this into to design, attractive design allows for a more enjoyable experience and helps people figure things out.

Norman also discusses the three levels of processing: visceral (the automatic layer), behavioral (everyday behavior layer) and reflective (contemplative layer). He then discusses how the three levels interact with each other and how they relate to focus and creativity. 

Discussion
I thought this chapter was a great first chapter, introducing us to what I believe will be the theme throughout the rest of the book: the challenges a designer faces when considering the design from a kind of emotional point of view.

Full Book Blog: Design of Everyday Things

Summary
The book offers many examples of poor and good design. Norman explores the benefits of mapping and the importance of a good conceptual model and making things visible. He also discusses how people blame their inability to make something work on themselves, the environment or some unrelated cause when the real problem is in the design of the object.

Norman also devotes a chapter to discussing how people remember things through their memory and through information presented in the world. He writes about the structure of memory and outlines three main categories to describe how we remember things: memory for arbitrary things, memory for meaningful relationships and memory through explanation.

In the fourth chapter Norman writes about how a user can know how to use different devices and discusses the different kinds of constraints – physical, semantic, logical and cultural – and how they limit the possible operations for a device.

The fifth chapter breaks down human errors into two main categories (slips and mistakes) and how to detect slips. Norman then relates slips to the design process to improve design. In chapter six he discusses the different challenges a designer faces when designing a new product. He discusses how certain negative forces like the demands of time and pressure can work against evolutionary design.

The final chapter discusses seven principles for transforming difficult tasks into simple tasks and the importance of standardizing design when something cannot be designed without difficulties. Norman also writes about how certain things actually need to be designed to be difficult.

In each chapter Norman backs up his claims and explanations with real-world examples and outlines the history of certain designs (like the typewriter and the writing process) in several chapters.

Discussion
Norman did a good job of making abstract ideas about design concrete. While I agreed with what he said, I hadn’t thought as deeply about the subjects as Norman wrote about them. He also gave great examples throughout the book to better prove his points.

Some of the parts I thought were most interesting were:
1) Section about how doors at a school for handicapped children have the latches at the very top of the door to prevent children from going outside alone – from chapter 7.
2) The discussion of the history of the typewriter and the discussion on the faucet designs – chapter 6.
3) Lego motorcycle and how he applies its simple design to the topics discussed in the chapter – chapter 4

I think it might be interesting for Norman to update his book now. Some of the examples he uses are a little out of date, and I’m sure there are a lot more designs he could examine and explain now.

Book Reading #21: Design of Everyday Things

Chapter 7
Summary
This final chapter in some ways summarizes the book as a whole. It discusses seven principles for transforming difficult tasks into simple tasks, reminds the readers of models and mapping and discusses constraints. Norman also writes about standardizing design when something cannot be designed without difficulties and how certain things actually need to be designed to be difficult. Norman also discusses automation and writes about the gradual automation of both the different styles and tools used over the years in writing.

Discussion
Something that confused me in this chapter was the mention of POET in the first sentence and throughout this final chapter. Perhaps I just never noticed it anywhere else or maybe it actually wasn’t mentioned before this chapter, but it threw me off for the first few pages of chapter 7 until I realized he was referring to the old title of this book.

I think the part I found most interesting about this chapter was the section about how doors at a school for handicapped children have the latches at the very top of the door to prevent children from going outside alone. While I think it could be dangerous in certain circumstances (and I’m not sure I’d be tall enough to reach the latch), it is interesting that this design was proposed and accepted.

Book Reading #18: Design of Everyday Things

Chapter 6
Summary
Chapter 6 focused on the different challenges a designer faces when designing a new product. He discussed how certain negative forces like the demands of time and the pressure to be distinctive work against evolutionary design. Norman also outlined the history of the typewriter and the design difficulties of the faucet. He outlined the different reasons why designers go astray: they put aesthetics first, they are not typical users and they’re clients may not be users. He also discussed creeping featurism and the worshiping of complexity, two temptations designers face. Norman concluded by relating the design issues discussed to computers.

Discussion
My favorite part of the chapter was the discussion of the history of the typewriter and the discussion on the faucet designs. I think we’ve all encountered a few faucets in our day that were designed poorly and left us with soapy hands or burned our fingers.

Book Reading #14: Design of Everyday Things

Chapter 5
Summary
This chapter breaks down human errors into two main categories, slips and mistakes, and then breaks the category of slip down further into the following categories: capture errors, description errors, data-driven errors, associative activation errors, loss-of-activation errors and mode errors.

Norman also discusses how to detect slips and then relates slips to the design process to improve design. He then presents the idea of wide, deep, shallow and narrow structures in relation to tasks and provides some examples.

In several sections of the chapter Norman discusses the human mind, focusing on human thought and the different behaviors of the conscious and subconscious.

At the end of the chapter he relates his different explanations on errors and the thought process to the design process and the use of forcing functions, a kind of constraint that makes it so that a failure at one stage prevents the user from moving on to the next stage. With several examples he highlights the importance of minimizing the nuisance value while retaining the safety value.

Discussion
As with the other chapters, I found myself nodding as I read through the different types of slips and the different examples presented throughout the chapter. I especially liked the section that linked mistakes to social pressure. It is something I would not have thought of initially that can actually play a big role in making mistakes out in the field.

Book Reading #11: Design of Everyday Things

Chapter 4
Summary
The fourth chapter focuses on how the user will know what to do with a device. Norman discusses the different kinds of constraints – physical, semantic, logical and cultural – and how they limit the possible operations for a device. He then discusses the problem with switches and the affect their arrangement has on the functionality of a device. Near the end of the chapter Norman discusses visibility when it comes to the display and immediate feedback through sounds.

Discussion
I really like the example he uses near the beginning of the chapter about the Lego motorcycle and how he applies its simple design to the four constraints he discusses. He also revisits the design of the door, which is always a good example to use because everyone has encountered a few poorly designed doors in their lifetime. I also found the last story at the end of the chapter about an institute in the Netherlands that had a lack of sounds and the negative impact that had on the users. I know I would doubt the ventilation system too if I couldn’t hear it working.

Book Reading #8: Design of Everyday Things

Chapter 3
Summary
The third chapter mainly discusses how people remember things through their memory and through information presented in the world. Norman discusses the difference between declarative and procedural knowledge and how great precision is often not required in day to day activities. He also discusses the structure of memory and outlines three main categories to describe how we remember things: memory for arbitrary things, memory for meaningful relationships and memory through explanation. Near the end of the chapter Norman focuses on knowledge presented in the world through reminding and natural mappings and concludes by discussing the tradeoffs between knowledge in the world and in the head.

Discussion
Norman does a good job of making abstract ideas more concrete and finding engaging ways to present them to the reader. I enjoyed his example with the penny – I also saw this in my psychology text book last semester – and the short narratives he uses to better explain the different ways in which we remember. I also enjoyed the section about reminding. I jot down notes all the time to help me remember things and will often depend on only the signal aspect of a reminder to help me remember things. Like if I need to remember to go somewhere on my way home after class, I will throw whatever object is available in my car onto the driver’s seat. It may not have anything to do with where I need to go but just seeing it there tells me I need to remember, so then I do.

Book Reading #5: Design of Everyday Things

Chapter 2
Summary
The second chapter discusses how people blame their inability to make something work on themselves, the environment or some unrelated cause when the real problem is in the design of the object. Norman gives several examples of this including a product that assigns similar functions to similar locations on a keyboard and a situation involving a man with a poorly designed alarm clock. He also describes the seven stages of action: forming the goal, forming the intention, specifying an action, executing the action, perceiving the state of the world, interpreting the state of the world and evaluating the outcome. The bottom line of this chapter is to help people understand that it is not always their fault when they cannot figure out how to work something. The problem is likely in the design.

Discussion
As in the first chapter, the author does a good job of providing the reader with examples for everything he discusses. I thought it was especially interesting how he broke down the stages of action into seven different stages. I also especially liked what he said about how we often blame ourselves when we cannot figure something out: “It is as if they take perverse pride in thinking of themselves as mechanically incompetent.” We all do this from time to time. I enjoyed reading his encouraging angle on it.

Book Reading #1 - Design of Everyday Things

Chapter 1
Summary
The first chapter focuses on the design of everyday things and gives several examples of poor design including doors, the author’s refrigerator and office telephones. The author highlights two principles of design: provide a good conceptual model and make things visible. He also discusses the importance of mapping, the relationship between two things, and the importance of feedback, informing the user what has just been done.

Discussion
The author does a great job of explaining the different principles of design through examples. The pictures and the discussion of floppy discs are a little outdated, but the chapter still makes for an interesting read. I found myself agreeing with much of what he said and citing examples in my own life.