Emotional Design

Author:

Don Norman

Summary:
This is yet another book by Don Norman.  This book is a response to his previous book The Design of Everyday Things.  Norman had gotten many complaints that if the world designed objects in the way he had first described then everything would work but would be ugly.  In this book he argues that he did not mean to discount the "emotional" side of design but to only bring attention the important fact that the product needs to actually work in order to be any good.

He goes through many scenarios much like in The Design of Everyday Things where he shows items that work well and that look good too.  One of the most prevalent images from his books are his obsession with teapots.  In the first book he showed the "masochist's teapot", a teapot where if you were to use it, you would surely scald yourself with boiling water.  He showed that this was badly designed for functional reasons.

In this book he tackles a different side of design, the aesthetics.  While he still states that functionality is important, it is equally important to have an emotional connection to the objects you own.  In fact, many of the objects that we hold most dear have no functional value at all (e.g. photographs of loved ones.)

He presents more teapots in this book, but now presents them in a different light.

He shows that he owns a "Coffeepot for Masochists", not for the functional value, but that every time he looks at it, it makes him smile.

He also owns a teapot designed by Michael Grave.  This teapot he states is beautiful, it works decently well and he uses it sometimes just for the sake that it is beautiful, not because the tea is better than another pot.  This is his example of a practical yet aesthetically pleasing object.

His third teapot is a Ronnefeldt "tilting" teapot.  This teapot is very unique as it is designed with each stage of the tea making process in mind.  This teapot is primarily functional, but he does not use it often because it is more work than he is willing to do for good tea.  It makes great tea, in fact, but just because it functional this does not mean it is the best choice for him.

While he enjoys all of his teapots, he actually rarely uses any of these three and they mainly serve as conversation starters.  Functional? No. Aesthetically pleasing? Yes.  Emotional connection? Definitely yes.

His point is that the emotional side of design is just as important as the functional side because we buy things for other reasons than to use on a daily basis.  This is the recurring theme throughout the book and is the main message he is trying to get across to the reader.  Although there are many other examples that he shares, this theme pretty much sums up the entire book.

Discussion:
I really do like Don Norman's writing.  A lot of it I can relate to and it makes the book that much more enjoyable.  I thought that this book was not quite as good as his first book but definitely a good addition to it.  I really have no bad comments and not really any good comments to share either.