emotional design

Just finished reading the latest Donald Norman book, Emotional Design. An interesting followup to his Design of Everday Things, Norman recognizes that there's more to the design of things than usability. The aesthetic aspect, both immediate and latent, should also be considered.

Norman's Big Thought (tm) of the book is when he breaks down design into 3 levels: visceral, behaviorial, and reflective.

These three levels translate into three different kinds of design. Visceral design refers primarily to that initial impact, to its appearance. Behavioral design is about look and feel -- the total experience of using a product. And reflection is about ones thoughts afterwards, how it makes one feel, the image it portrays, the message it tells others about the owner's taste.

From jnd.org

So it's interesting to think about contemporary objects in this light. Take the popular Apple iPod.

• Visceral: "oooh, it's all shiny and curvy and... oooh, I want one. What does it do?"
• Behavioral: "Hey, that's a nifty jog-dial thing. Finding my fave mp3 was sure easy."
• Reflective: "Now that I have an iPod, I too can be considered an urban hipster"

The total meaning of the designed object is the collision of all three aspects. Sometimes, we buy very functional things that work well, but look ugly and have no brand appeal. Other times we buy very visceral objects with low functionality and low social context. And finally, sometimes we consume things that are both unattractive and unusable, but they are cool and have a lot of status attached to them.

Speaking of collisions, I was pointed in the direction of Gladwell's article on the SUV last week by Darren, who's reading all of Gladwell's online articles on his daily Seabus commute. In his essay, Gladwell discusses the perplexing popularity of the SUV. Perplexing given its dismal safety track record -- he references a set of car safety statistics on accidents, deaths, and types of vehicles: SUV's rank very poorly for safety. But yet, for some reason, most people seem to buy SUV's more than other vehicles and often based on a criteria of safety. Or, as Gladwell points out, the "feeling of safety" given that it's pretty much an illusion based on the stats mentioned above.

And how is this feeling achieved? How are consumers given the sense that their vehicle is more safe than a sub-compact or a mini van?

Over the past decade, a number of major automakers in America have relied on the services of a French-born cultural anthropologist, G. Clotaire Rapaille, whose speciality is getting beyond the rational--what he calls "cortex"--impressions of consumers and tapping into their deeper, "reptilian" responses. And what Rapaille concluded from countless, intensive sessions with car buyers was that when S.U.V. buyers thought about safety they were thinking about something that reached into their deepest unconscious. "The No. 1 feeling is that everything surrounding you should be round and soft, and should give," Rapaille told me.

Visceral design. The immediate response to the SUV, both its interior and exterior. With a heavy dose of reflective design tossed in, certainly for the US market and the hip-hop crowd (Cadillac Escalade = high bling factor = reflective design). But the behavioral design, the usability and functionality of said SUV, the design that will save your life, sucks.

But people don't seem to care. As long as they feel safe, have the illusion of being safe, then they are safe.

Back to Norman. I'm not sure that Norman in his book would argue that this is a good thing. But he doesn't really tackle the "dark side" of visceral design, or powerful reflective design. Sure, his collection of teapots and fruit juicers are fun: objects with playful ingenuity, artful objects that engage us and make us smile. I'm sure you have some in your house too. But it's a bit disconcerting, as Gladwell points out, when these items are large moving vehicles that weigh several tons and are one of the most expensive, revolutionary and devastating technologies ever designed. Should visceral design be getting all the attention here?

In further thinking about Norman's three levels of design (visceral, behaviorial, reflective) I decided that these happen to match up fairly nicely with some 2300 year old design concepts, the Aristolean forms of rhetoric: logos, ethos, and pathos. Roughly defined, logos is all about the clear logical, rational delivery of the message and the corresponding rationale response (yes, logic comes from logos); ethos is all about the character, reputation, trust in the speaker; and pathos is the appeal to emotion, the tugging at the heart-strings.

Visceral | Pathos | immediate, sensory based, "reptillian response"
Behavioral | Logos | logic, usability, functionality
Reflective | Ethos | brand, reputation, trust, credibility

It's not quite bang-on, but all designed objects are in some way an act of persuasion, and you can see where designers employ varying degrees of ethos, pathos, and logos throughout their designs.

Which brings me to the end of this bit. But not before making a connection to SUV's, rhetoric, and the recent election in the USA. And it doesn't seem like a big leap to go from GW to SUV in my head for some reason. Rhetoric was on my mind listening to the evening news soundbytes on the way home from work. And these concepts seem to fit together nicely.

I must admit, when choosing a politician, I think a healthy dose of logos and some substatiated ethos are probably good things. Good sound arguments, well delivered, logic that I can follow, and delivered by someone I can trust and is credible. Most politicians though, especially those that just happened to run for the big job down south, seem to favour the pathos. Heavy on the pathos, light on the logos, and questionable on the ethos. Stirring speeches about a nation's purpose and destiny, bringing into question the credibility of one's opponent, and not really explaining much of how we managed to get where we are or how we're going to get out of this big mess.

Politics and SUV's are different in a lot of ways -- perhaps different enough that this seems like a bit of a stretch. But it just seems as though we are paying a bit too much attention to the visceral, the pathos of it all these days. And not enough to some of the logos. Or even the truth of what hides behind the signifiers of ethos -- the reputation and trust and respect of the poltician/Ford Explorer/persuader and whether those things are legitimate or not.

Now back to my collection of shiny things...

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Added Nov 11/04: Dilbert's take on putting profit before safety.