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January 29, 2004
emotional design
I've just finished the new book by Don Norman, "Emotional Design".
His previous books got me excited and enthralled by usable product design. The Psychology of Everyday Things and the Invisible Computer remain two of my favourite books, grounded to the real world, making a real case for user centred design. So expectations were high.
Why do you just want to pick up an iPod? Why are rollercoasters fun? In this book, Norman tries to put his finger on why some unusable products sell, and how usability can design the fun out of products. To do this, he proposes three types of design - visceral, behavioural, and reflective. Usability focusses on the behavioural design, and now he implores us to consider the other two types.
The problem with this book is that it offers little answers, or even tools to help these kinds of design. POET gave us affordances, the Invisible Computer showed user centred design methods working in real product teams, and thoughts on big-I IA (reorganise the company). Here there is little... other than robots.
I quaked slightly when the book turned to robots. Suddenly we lurched from products that induce emotion, including a good section on machine-mediated communication, to things that have to be emotional - a far easier topic, and one that AI, CS and roboticists have been thinking about for decades. For the last few chapters, we veer from one side to the other. The first example of good emotional robots is a vision for a robotic kitchen, with dishwashing robots, cooking robots and butler robots. This would almost make sense if robots were taken in their widest reading (doing physical things, but not necessarily moving), but a dystopian Tati-esque dream is painted, with the robot butler worrying so much about your lack of coffee that it cannot collect the cups needed by the dishwasher robot.
Norman's solution is to imbew robots with more emotion functionality. This seems to mean little more in the near future than wiring up sensors to replicate pain, danger, and hunger. We briefly visit Asimov's 3(ish) robotic laws. A few good examples of how these affect product design are given, such as Mercedes designing the break pedal to break fully if sharp pressure is applied, even if not fully depressed ("harm through inaction"). But then we've back on emotional robots, why cars should drive themselves, robots used for nefarious means and the ethics of building such robots, how robots may replace teachers... it reads like a poor episode of the Jetsons.
The epilogue had a title that sent bigger shudders through me - "we are all designers". The thrust of this essay is that everyone is a designer now, because we can pick and choose the best solutions (I pick this pen, this paper and this desk to write with). Whilst this is true, it doesn't mean anyone can pick up a piece of paper and start designing new things, nor know how to take the designs, test them, and get them built. We finish with a pretty-good overview of customisation and personalisation.
The post-epilogue offers a clue as to why the book is a bit of a mishmash - it started out as a manuscript entitled "The Future of Everyday Things", which didn't seem to hold together. The work on emotion was a separate project Norman was involved with, but then used as a framework for this book.
It's a rollercoaster. This book is worth reading for the examples, even if you disagree with some of the analysis. He quotes from several other good books (including The Media Equation, The Humane Interface, Persuasive Technology, A Pattern Language), so to me a lot of the ideas aren't that new. Less-voracious bookreaders will probably find a few good titles to hunt down. There seems to be a trend in academic books to quote from websites and the more populist press, which means, more than ever, you should check the sources for more depth.
If you're involved with designing things for people, you should give it a read, to be completist and to spark thoughts (including the awful Alessi juicy salif juicer on the cover). Just don't expect to come out of this book rabbleroused and tubthumping. Or wanting a robot.
A few chapters are available here.
I've just noticed that Don Norman is the latest keynote speaker to be added to Etcon. If you see someone trying to corner him, that'll be me!
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