Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things

Citation

Parsons, A.L. (2006), "Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 23 No. 2, pp. 115-116. https://doi.org/10.1108/07363760610655069

Have you ever wondered why you feel warmly about and get attached to some household items yet feel frustrated and angry with others? Donald Norman helps to answer this question by investigating the role emotion plays in how we use and react to products and ultimately how designers should consider our emotional reactions to products designed to be both functional and aesthetically pleasing. The Prologue presents us with a discussion related to three teapots from the author's collection and how each measures up to various expectations about form and function. This helps to set up the rest of the book and grab the reader's attention.

In the first two chapters Norman helps us to understand the meaning of things. He develops a framework that describes three levels of information processing in the brain – visceral, behavioral, and reflective, and how these three levels relate to how we perceive products and their characteristics:

1. 1.

   N: Visceral – “The visceral level is pre‐consciousness, pre‐thought. This is where the appearance matters and first impressions are formed. Visceral design is about the initial impact of a product, about its appearance, touch, and fee” (p. 37).

2. 2.

   Behavioral – “The behavioral level is about use, about experience with a product. But experience itself has many facets: function, performance, and usability … Confuse or frustrate the person who is using the product and negative emotions result. But if the product does what is needed, if it is fun to use and easy to satisfy goals with it, then the result is warm, positive affect” (p. 37).

3. 3.

   Reflective – “It is only at the reflective level that consciousness and the highest level of feelings, emotions and cognitions reside. It is only here that the full impact of both thought and emotions are experienced … Interpretation, understanding, and reasoning come from the reflective level” (p. 37‐38). The reflective level relates to how products and product characteristics relate to our “self‐image, personal satisfaction, and memories” (p. 39).

Objects can play a number of different roles. They can serve a particular function, they can evoke memories, or they can help us define our sense of self. Companies try to create brand or product personalities through advertising and designing products that will ultimately evoke emotions in the people who buy them.

After establishing this framework, in the next three chapters Norman applies it to the world of design by using many concrete examples to illustrate the challenges product designers face. Chapter 3, “Three levels of design”, elaborates on the three levels of processing and how they relate to product design. Designers must strike a balance between making products that are both functional and aesthetically pleasing that will ultimately evoke positive emotions in people. They can do this by trying to incorporate all three levels of design. An example of product design that succeeds at all three levels is the Motorola headset that NFL coaches use on the sidelines. The design had to be functional to withstand the elements and the coach's emotional outbursts, be comfortable enough for the coaches to wear for an extended period of time, and be presentable while featuring the Motorola logo in an unobtrusive manner.

In Chapter 4, “Fun and games”, Norman discusses how there is a need for items to be fun and pleasurable because “beauty, fun, and pleasure all work together to produce enjoyment” (p. 103). There is also a need to consider how to maintain excitement, interest, and pleasure over the life of a product. Whether a product can successfully accomplish this goal depends on both the designer and the user. Another important component of design that impacts the emotional response to a product is the use of music and sounds. Sounds can be pleasurable, useful, fun, and inspiring, but they also can be annoying or intrusive.

Chapter 5, “People, places, and things”, helps to answer the question of why we get so frustrated with inanimate objects. We are social creatures who want to interact with others, so when we interact with objects and they do not perform in the way we would like them to, we may take out our frustration on the object because the object cannot fight back. Another important facet of the way we interact with people and machines is the trust factor. We build emotional attachment over time and ultimately feel most attached to the products that we trust to do what we have expected them to do in the past.

The last two chapters, “Emotional machines” and the “Future of robots”, present information about emotional machines and the role of robots in the future. The main premise of these two chapters is that machines today are intelligent but do not need emotions. However, in the future they will need emotions as well as intelligence. While the other chapters make an effort to link the emotional processing framework to product design and product use, these two chapters steer a bit off course and seem out of place. These two chapters are also quite long.

The “Epilogue” brings everything back together with anecdotes about products people love and hate that illustrate the point that we can have passion for the things we own, the services we use, and the things we experience in life. We as consumers strive to make things personal and may often customize products to better service our needs. Norman suggests that “we are all designers” in that “we manipulate the environment, the better to serve our needs. We select what items to own, which to have around us. When consciously, deliberately rearranging objects on our desks, the furniture in our living rooms, and the things we keep in our cars, we are designing” (p. 224). The implication is that product designers should make an effort to try to understand how consumers might interact with the products they design.

There seems to be an ever growing concern about and interest in product design in recent years. For example, Business Week announces annual Design Awards and publishes an annual “Best products of the year list”. Donald Norman's timely book provides some insights into why design is so important and how emotions play a role in the results of design, namely how consumers use finished products.

Anyone who teaches consumer behavior could apply the material from this book to enhance a discussion about the role of emotions in how consumers make decisions about products and how they use them. The coverage of emotion in many consumer behavior textbooks is limited, and this book could serve as an enhancement to any text. It could also be used as supplemental reading in a new products management course. The clever use of descriptive examples and pictures and the effort to speak to a non‐academic audience improve the practical value of this book.

Amy L. Parsons

Associate Professor of Marketing,King's College, Wilkes‐Barre,Pennsylvania, USA