September 30, 2009

1) Select a brief passage from Chapter Three Emotional Design by Donald Norman and post it on your blog. Explain why you thought it was interesting.

"There are two kinds of product development: enhancement and innovation. Enhancement means to take some existing product or service and make it better. Innovation provides a completely new way of doing something, or a completely new thing to do, something that was not possible before. Of the two, enhancements are much easier."

I found this particular section interesting enough to share it with my father, who is an inventor of sorts. He holds seven or so different patents on plastic products, most of which are enhancements. Although enhancements are easier to develop, they are equally as important as innovations. I believe that enhancements lead to innovative technology and ideas. Therefore, most designers have to take baby-steps in order to produce something so profound that society refers to it as "innovative".

2) Norman uses the terms Visceral Design, Behavioral Design, Reflective Design. Do these categories seem useful to you? Would other names or phrases make the categories clearer?

I think that the categories of Emotional Design, as Norman labels them, are extremely useful. They allow people to separate and classify products and ideas by qualities that they possess. Personally, if I were a designer, I would refer to the three terms Norman uses: Visceral Design, Behavioral Design, and Reflective Design to evaluate whatever it may be that I'm creating.

3) How could a designer decide if Visceral Design, Behavioral Design, or Reflective Design is more important for a particular product? Are some types of products more visceral, behavioral, or reflective?

I think that most designers are contracted by another, larger company to create their products. So in those cases most companies have a general idea or reputation they want the designers to follow. But, there are also designers who have free-reign and can decide what they want their product to embody, demonstrate, or exude.

There are absolutely products that are designed to be more visceral, behavioral, or reflective. In class, we compared sweat-pants to tight-fitting designer jeans. Clearly, sweat-pants are designed to be functional whereas, the designer jeans are designed to be more viscerally attractive.