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

by Donald Norman
Basic Books, New York, 2003
272 pp. Trade $26.00
ISBN 0-465-05135-9.

Reviewed by John Knight
User-Lab
Birmingham Institute of Art and Design

John.knight@uce.ac.uk

Crammed with ideas and interesting facts, this eminently readable book raises many questions, starting with why emotion and why now? Norman answers that "just as emotions are critical to human behaviour, they are equally critical for intelligent machines" (13) and "until recently emotion was an ill-explored part of human psychology" (18). At a more personal level he describes his conversion thus:

"I didn’t take emotions into account I addressed utility and usability, function and form, all in a logical, dispassionate way. But now I’ve changed. Why, in part because of new scientific advances in our understanding of the brain and how emotion and cognition are thoroughly intertwined" (8).

He admits that dispassion led to "a well-deserved criticism from designers: "[I]f I were to follow Norman’s prescription, our designs would be usable––but they would also be ugly’" (8). Having set the scene, he goes on to scope the content. The book is "about affect, not just emotion" (10).

The main content is in two parts: "The Meaning of Things" and "Design in Practice." Norman’s skill in making a subject accessible is evident, and the book makes a refreshing attempt to bring art, science, technology, and human factors together. However, some big issues are skipped through.

Controversies in the social and cultural aspects of affect are glossed over and while the approach is bold, it may seem premature to say, "Today we have that theory (aesthetics and function) one based in biology, neuroscience and psychology, not mysticism." (20).

At the core of the book is a model for emotional design. The three-level model comes from Norman’s work with Andrew Ortony and William Revelle and proposes: "[T]hree different levels of brain mechanism: the automatic, prewired layer called the visceral level; the part that contains the brain processes that control everyday behaviour, known as the behavioural level and the contemplative part of the brain, or the reflective level." Furthermore, "[t]hese three components interweave both emotions and cognition" (6). The model is then operationalised into: "Visceral Design", "Behavioural Design" and "Reflective" "Design" (5).

The model is more or less robust when applied to the real world. Gaming would seem to fare better than aesthetics in terms of a visceral, behavioural and reflective experience. The results often reveal a physical and cognitive focus, so that "attractiveness is a visceral level phenomenon––the response is entirely to the surface look of an object" (87), while "[t]he properties of consonant and dissonant chords derive in part from physics in part from the mechanical properties of the inner ear (116).

As a companion to Ray Crozier’s (sadly out of print) "Manufactured Pleasures: Psychological responses to design," the book brings the subject up to date. Unlike Crozier, Norman is often prescriptive and has some strong opinions on the arts: "The cheap reproduction of famous paintings, buildings and monuments are cheap, as they have little artistic merit being copies of existing work and poor copies at that "(47). "Why is an expensive painting superior to a high quality reproduction? . . . . [B]ecause of the reflective value of owning and viewing the original" (86).

He argues that, "We are all designers. We manipulate the environment the better we serve our needs" (227). Taking an anti-elitist stand, he argues "[s]ophistication often brings with it a peculiar disdain for popular appeal" (38). Indeed, his taste is often retro and blokish. As well as critical he is often pre-modern in approach.

Despite his boldness, the political climate is never far away. We find Norman "[l]iving in an untrustworthy world" (142) where "security is more of a social or human problem" (145). Pessimism in the present: "[I]t is not uncommon to hate the things we interact with" (7) is balanced with a brighter future. Thus "[e]motional machines will avoid problems of annoyance" (194) and "technologies that provide the rich power of interaction without the disruption" (157).

Donald Norman has taken a bold step in bringing art and science together in an accessible and engaging manner. He offers us a humanist perspective on technology that links the past, present, and future of emotional design and leaves a rich seam for other researchers to develop.