While reading the first three chapter of Donald A. Norman’s Emotional Design: Why we love (or hate) the design of everyday things, I could not help but smile as the author and I explore on why some of my favourite objects or things are my FAVOURITE, the attachment, emotional and a story in which each of them have, I could not help it that I was even humming my favourite song while reading the book. As the book progress I was introduce on some of the ‘scientific’ terms on how the brains and emotion works as it recognize an aesthetic beauty. As the title of the book implies, the book explore how a person’s emotion place a vital part on determining why we love (or hate) certain things, why we grew attach to them and how it effect our everyday lives or is it ‘affect’.
Early on the chapter and even in the prologue, the author uses three important words which is Visceral, Behavioral and Reflective. These three words are actually three aspects of design, Visceral design is all about the appearance, it is the natural instinct of human and nature, the things that one would find appealing and appalling; Behavioral design is the pleasure and effectiveness of using certain objects or things, how they function, for example like a perfectly made brush that from each stroke you can feel how good and easy you could do painting with it; lastly Reflective design is when you rationalized an object, it is the experience and memories that you share with the object, your personal satisfaction with the object. All of these three aspects are level that is connected to the sensory and motor system of our body, and it is responsible on how our body works through emotion.
With all these ‘scientific’ talk, one might ask what is the connection between beauty and function ? Well function is the usefulness of certain things, the object and how it effective and how well you can use it. Sometimes with the effectiveness of the object’s function one could look pass the appalling exterior of the object but often times people just loves to look at nice thing despite how flaw the objects function is and how useless it is. But why is it so ? The author elaborate on how it is human nature to feel happy and good with these attractive objects, these attractive things could sometime brighten up their day in some cases. So are these attractive objects useless ? Well I don’t think these objects are useless as they have purposes, some of things in our house or places in our everyday lives are fill with these so called useless items, but it is actually creating an atmosphere, a comfortable atmosphere for people around it. To elaborate more on the subject the author recall an experiment that explore beauty and function, the conclusion of the experiment suggest that attractive things make people feel good, which in turn makes them think more creatively, with that said not only does beauty has a function, it also helps people to use certain useful objects better.
On the surface a bonsai tree may seem useless but it is full of aesthetics value in terms of visceral and reflective design.
The author wrote that memories could even help a person find something beautiful in part of Reflective design. And often times that this object aren’t even attractive to a normal person but to the person who connect the object with his Reflective side it could be the beautiful thing in the world. Well this isn’t something unusual, because most of the times a person have an attachment with these objects; it creates a feeling of fondness that attracts a person to these certain objects. The author wrote that ‘Memories can trigger powerful, long lasting emotion’, this is the power the Reflective design but it is also the most unpredictable aspect of all the three level. Why is this so ? You might asked, well the answer is quite simple it is because each person differ on what attract them.
A photograph of Glen Hansard's Guitar Takamine NP 15 dub 'The Horses' , it is a broken down one but is still the most prized guitar for Hansard and his fan, because of the story and attachment it brings, it is his identity and it also helps that it stills sounds wonderful while performing live.
There was an interesting phrase that the author wrote, ‘Today’s sophistication runs the risk of becoming tomorrow’s discard’. I find this quote interesting because it is something that has boggles my mind in recent years, it is something that I have observed and noticed. The simplest answer would be that human have a short attention span, but I don’t think the answer is that simple. I think it is human nature to want something that is new, attractive and distinctive, something that makes them special, and something that makes them stands out from other people. Hence something that is overused but is still very much attractive and sophisticated could be discarded like yesterday newspaper. But it is also something that is profitable from a designers’ standpoint, as people demanded new and revolutionary things, it is the designers’ job to fulfill their request.
In conclusion, emotions in design are a very tricky subject but it is also the closest thing to something concrete that we have on the subject of aesthetic beauty. And if you think and ponder about it emotions on design really do make sense in what and why we find certain things in our everyday lives beautiful or attractive.
by Muhammad Syauqi Bin Muhammad Sophie (D20111050110)
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