2nd assignment : why we love (or hate) everyday things

In the emotional design about why we love (or hate) everyday things book written by Donald A.Norman and inspired by the author of The Design Of Everyday Things described about the appliances that we apply in our daily life. Like for example in chapter one, Attractive things work better, Noam Tractinsky, An Israel Scientist making an investigation about how attractive things certainly should be preferred over ugly ones. Japanese researchers, Masaaki Kurosu and Kaori Koshimura studied different layouts of controls for ATM. All versions of the ATM were identical in function, but some had the buttons and screens arranged attractively, the others unattractively. The Japanese found that the attractive ones were perceived to be easier to use. “ Aesthetic preferences are culturally dependent”, said Tractinsky. Herbert Read, who wrote numerous books on art and aesthetic stated, “it requires a somewhat mystical theory of aesthetic to find any necessary connection between beauty and function”. Attractive things do work better because people easily catch their eyes to the things that really do attract them such as, when the design of a products look more creative and beautiful, it attracts people to buy it without even care about the price because the feel that they should have and own it.

The author of this book research a project examining the interaction of affect, behaviour and cognition but he found that Tractinsky’s result bothered him. He found that emotions change the way human mind solves problems and the emotional system changes how the cognitive system operates. Most thought of emotions as a problem to be overcome by rational, logical thinking. Positive emotions are critical to learning, curiosity and creative thought. The psychologist Alice Isen and her colleagues have shown that being happy broadens the thought process and facilitates creative thinking. When you feel good, Isen discovered, you are better at brainstorming, at examining multiple, alternatives when people are anxious they tend to narrow their thought processes, concentrating upon aspects directly relevant to a problem. This is a useful strategy in escaping from danger, but not in thinking of imaginative new approaches to a problem. Isen’s results show that when people are relaxed and happy, their thought processes expand, becoming more creative, more imaginative. In other words, happy people are more effective in finding alternative solutions and as a results, are tolerant of minor difficulties.

There are three different levels of the brain, the automatic, prewired layer called 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. The three level interact with one another. Everything we do has both a cognitive and an affective component. The affective state, whether positive or negative affect, changes how we think. When you are in a state of negative affect, feeling anxious or endangered, the neurotransmitters focus the brain processing. Positives affect arouses curiosity, engages creativity, and makes the brain into an effective learning organism. Someone who is relaxed, happy, in a pleasant mood, Is more creative, more able to overlook and cope with minor problems with a device. Too much anxiety produces a phenomenon known as “tunnel vision” where the people becomes so focused they may fail to see otherwise obvious alternatives. Basically, because of the extreme focus and tunnel vision induced by high anxiety, the situation has to be designed to minimize the need for creative thought.

Human language comes from the behavioural and reflective levels, it provides a good example of how biological predisposition mix with the experience. Emotions, moods, traits and personality are all aspects of the different ways in which people’s minds work, especially along the affective, emotional domain. Emotion change behaviour over a relatively short term, for they are responsive to the immediate events. The behavioural and reflective levels, however, are very sensitive to experiences, training and education.

There are a lot of explanations in chapter two about the multiple faces of emotion and design. Three different levels of the brain which is visceral, behavioural and reflective differ widely requirements for the design. The visceral level is pre-consciousness. This is where appearance matters and first impression are formed. Visceral design is about the initial impact of a product, about its appearance. The behavioural level is about use, about experience with a product. But experience itself has many facets which is function, performance and usability. Of the three levels, the reflective one is the most vulnerable to variability through culture, experience and education. Reflective design is about long-term relations, about the feelings of satisfaction produced by owning, displaying and using a product.

In the world of design, we tend to associate emotion with beauty. We build attractive, cute and colourful things. However important these attributes, they are not what drive people in their everyday lives. We like attractive things because of the way they make us. Some objects can evoked us a memories that happens in the past. Like a mementoes, postcard and souvenir monuments, for example the Eiffel Tower. These objects may remind us when we take a look for a moments and that make us think and reflect about the enjoyable and unforgettable experiences that we had when we visited that place. A photo also an object that captured a memory that we had for the past of our life. They are personal and they tell stories. The power of personal photography lies in its ability to transport the viewer back in time to some socially relevant events. This allowing memories to be shared across time, place and people. Amy Cowen, who wrote about Frohlich’s work, described its importance this way : “ With every photo there is a story, a moment, a memory. As time passes, however, the user’s ability to recall the details needed to evoke the moment the picture records fades. Adding sound to a photo can help keep the memories intact.”

In part two, explain more about the design in practice. Most of all, the part two explain in more details about the three levels of design which is visceral, behavioural and reflective. Each of the three levels of design plays its part in shaping our experience. Visceral design is what nature does. We are exquisitely tuned to receive powerful emotional signals form the environment that get interpreted automically at the visceral level. We can find visceral design in advertising, folk art and crafts and children’s items. Effective visceral design requires the skills of the visual and graphic artist and the industrial engineer. Behavioural design is all about use. Appearance and rational does not really matter but performances does. The four matter of good behavioural design are the function, understandability, usability and physical feel. 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. Of the two, enhancement are much easier. Reflective-level operations often determine a person’s overall impression of a product. reflective design is really about long-term customer experiences. It is about service, about providing a personal touch and warm interaction.

In conclude, mostly this book explain about the basic tools of emotional design. Attractive things do work better. Attractiveness produces positive emotions, causing mental processes to be more creative, more tolerant of minor difficulties. The three levels of processing lead to three corresponding forms of design, the visceral, behavioural and reflective. Each plays a critical role in human behaviour, each equally critical role in design, marketing and use of product.

design aesthetic (1st assignment)

Schiller’s importance in the intellectual history of Germany is by no means confined to his poetry and dramas. He did notable work in history and philosophy and in the department of esthetics especially, he made significant contributions, modifying and developing in important respects the doctrines of Kant.

He keenly sensible of the importance of the charm and dignity of this undertaking. He was imputed to a service when people generously impose to himself as a duty. Why did he scarcely incur the risk of sinning against good taste by any undue used of them? He rather drawn from within than from reading or intimated experience with the world and he prefer to succumb by their innate feebleness than sustain themselves by borrowed authority and foreign support. He states that our liberty of mind shall be sacred and the facts upon which he builds will be furnished by our own sentiments. Why do the philosophers disagree regard to the ideas which predominate in the practical part of Kant’s system? In her wisdom has given to man in order to serve as guide and teacher until his enlightened gives him maturity. In chemist, the philosopher find synthesis by analysis or only through the torture of art in order to detain the fleeting apparition, he must enchain it in the fetters of rule, dissect its fair proportions into abstract notions.

In his second letter, it is unseasonable to go in search of a code for the aesthetic world when the spirit of philosophical inquiry is so stringently challenged by the circumstances of our times to occupy itself with the most perfect of all works of art. Schiller state that a man conceived to be unseemly and unlawful to segregate himself from the custom manners of the circle which he lives it would be inconsistent not to see that it is equally his duty to grant a proper share of influence to the voice of his own epoch, to its taste and its requirements, in the operations in which he engages. Why the eyes of the philosopher as well as of the man of the world are anxiously turned to the theatre of political events? It is presumed the great destiny of man is to be played out. For this great commerce in social and moral principles is a matter to every human being, it must accordingly be of deepest moment to every man to think for himself. Why a question formerly was only settled by the law while every man who is capable of placing himself in a central position? He resisting his step to the attractive purpose and preferring beauty to freedom. He shall succeed in convincing us that this matter of art is less foreign to the needs than to the tastes of our age.

The first passage in letter three telling us that man has an important role to the nature of life. Man does not remains stationary where nature has placed him and that he can convert the work of necessity into one of free solution. In many cases man shakes off his blind law of necessity in his ennobling by beauty and suppressing by moral influence the powerful impulse implanted in him by nature in passion of love. How he recovers his childhood by an artificial process? He founds a state of nature in his ideas, not given him by any experience and he attributes to this ideal condition an object which he was not cognisant in the actual reality of nature.
How the term of natural condition can be applied to every political body which owes its establishment originally to forces and not to laws? Why such a state contradict the moral nature of man? It is because lawfulness can alone have authority over this. What are the great point to reconcile the two considerations is to prevent physical society from ceasing for a moment in time and to prevent its existence from being place in jeopardy for the sake of the moral dignity of man. Accordingly props must be sought for to support society and keep it going while it is made independent of the natural condition from which it is sought to emancipate it. But this prop believed that it is not found in the natural character of man, who, being selfish and violent.
A third character previously suggested, has preponderance that a revolution in a state according to moral principles can be free from injurious consequences nor can secure its endurance. In forth paragraph, The condition of the human will always remains contigent and that only being physical coexist with moral necessity. The moral conduct of man as on natural results must become nature and must be led by natural impulse.Two ways present themselves to the thought, in which the man of time can agree with the man of idea, and there are also two ways in which the state can maintain itself in individuals.The pure ideal man subdues the empirical man, and the state suppresses the individual. Why education will always appear deficient when the moral feeling can only be maintained with the sacrifice of what is natural? For the nature on which he works does not deserve any respect in itself, and he does not value the whole for its parts, but the parts on account of the whole.The internal man is one with himself able to rescue his peculiarity, even in the greatest generalisation of his conduct.The cultivated man makes of nature his friend, and honours its friendship, while only bridling its caprice. Nature strives to maintain her manifold character in the moral structure of society, this must not create any breach in moral unity.

In paragraph five, he state that the consideration of opinion is fallen and caprice in unnerved is true. Although still armed with power, receives no longer any respect. The edifice of the natural state is tottering and to honour man at length as end and to make true freedom the basic of political union. Objective humanity may have had cause to complain of the state, yet subjective man must honour its institutions. The child of nature, when he breaks loose, becomes a madman, but the art scholar when he breaks loose, becomes a debased character. The man of the world has his heart contracted by a proud self-complacency, while that of the man of nature often beats in sympathy. Culture, far from giving us freedom, only develops, as it advances, new necessity and the maxims of passive obedience are held to be the highest wisdom of life.

In this letter form the first until to fifth letter, i can conclude that Schiller's tell us that man must put a big effort to build this world so that it can be properly arranged in a good ways. we must always keep the beauty of the nature and also the beauty of our own life so that the people around us would keep their good mind towards us.

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