The Role of Emotion in Design

Once I started to think about things in terms of product design it’s as though I descended Alice's rabbit hole and have new eyes. I have read sections of Donald Norman’s Emotion Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things with enthusiasm. In the book he delved into design from the perspective of usability, aesthetics and practicality. I will no longer look at teapots in quite the same way as he uses this simple item to illustrate how we put emotion into the purchase of things in our life and how they are often imbued with meaning. Think about being inside of a Pier One store and looking at twenty-five models of teapots. Will we choose one because of its visceral design – they way it looks? Or from a behavioral perspective, i.e. its usefulness and the pleasure we derive from it? Or do we buy one that has a story of some sort to “tell” about “who we are” and how we choose to live our lives? What Norman really is saying is that emotion plays a bigger part in our lives than our rational, logical tradition. There’s a chapter about the role that music plays in our emotional lives and how some design seeks to capitalize on that. In the book is an example of a teakettle designed to evoke the same notes as steamers and barges on the Rhine River. There’s too much sound and noise in my life – so as you can see from this example – my teakettle which has a very handsome and practical aspect has no whistle anymore – because it was too annoying…