Don Norman's Emotional Design

Don Norman’s video Emotional Design refers to the affect of people’s emotions, from designers to consumers, on the world of design.  In order to actually come up with great products that will agree with consumers’ emotions, designers must be in a happy state of mind which allows for more creative and out of the box thinking, problem solving and makes the designer more susceptible to interuption leading to great ideas and designs. However designers must not always be in this state of mind as they will always find a better way of doing something and in turn designs will never be finished. Therefore in order to help designers get their work done they must set deadlines and be anxious. Norman talks of his new approach to design which is “beautiful”. He suggests that great designs are not necessarily those that are beautiful to look at but unpractical or those that work great but look ugly (which was his previous approach to design). Consumer are much more interested in designs that, alongside functuality, also bring them fun, pleasure and happines when being used. In order to succeed in the eyes of consumers, each design must reach 3 levels of a human’s emotions . These include the Visceral level, which can be experienced by the choice of colour or font used within the design, the behavioral level, which can be reached by making the consumer feel incontrol through creating a design that is easy to use and understand, and the reflective level, where designs are able to reach the consumer’s consciousness. The video effectively conveys the huge affect emotion has on everyday designs and how strongly consumers’ decisions are affected by their emotions. Through this video it is clear that the world of design is meanigless without emotion.  It is evident that in order to become a designer one must be fully aware of consumers’ emotions and which they wish to affect, however, in order to be a successful designer one must strive to reach the visceral, behavioral and reflective level within consumers and in turn creating a product which brings fun pleasure and happiness. Furthermore designers must be in the right state of mind through every step of their product design enabling them to maximise the success of each and every product they design.