Running notes from Emotional Design: The Principles Donald A. Norman, Nielsen Norman Group http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/et2004/view/e_sess/4979 at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference: http://conferences.oreilly.com/etech/ 11 February, 2004 San Diego, CA by Cory Doctorow doctorow@craphound.com -- I no longer tell you why everything is crappy -- now I'm the guy who tells you how nice and pretty things can be. The orange juicer on the cover of my new book, Emotional Design, evokes strong emotion. I'm here to talk about consumer products, not computers. Getting the tech right is only part of the problem: the big part is the hearts and minds, so your customers enjoy it. There's something about physical design that really turns people on. The tech has to be flaawlessly, but no one cares about it -- it's just infrastructure. See the Mini Cooper -- the NYT said, "It has many flaws, but boy is it fun." I used to buy stuff that I knew was b0rked, but I wanted to own them anyway. -- Some theory Our brain is organized (oversimply) with two info-processing systems: Cognition (understanding) and emotion (judgement). You have three levels: visceral (pre-wired and in-born, detects cliffs, bitter tastes, etc), behavioral (automatic mechanisms that happen without conscious intervention), reflective (the part that listens to yourself. Geeks ignore bottom two levels, but this is where companies and products live and die. -- Emotions prepare us for action: when a lizard detects danger, it tightens muscles. Following these responses is how we read one-another. Emotions can be mixed: skydiving evinces fear of heights and falling, but it also changes the adrenaline levels in the body, which changes the way you undersnad the world. -- What's the main difference between bottled water? The bottle. Compare the bottles for Perrier (simple), Crystal Geiser (behavioral and functional), and Ty-nant (visceral, Welsh). Or the 1961 E-type Jag: doesn't run very well, but it's in the MOMA, that's visceral. Look at food -- the food you eat in your home tastes better in a restaurant when it's well-plated. Washing and polishing your car makes it drive better. -- Why? Because when you feel good, hormones flood your brain and make you more forgiving of imperfection. When you're tense and nervous, the reverse happens. Pretty things and good moods makes things work better and make things taste better. -- Inject viscous silicon oil into a potentiometer makes it feel better, even though it's the same cheap thing it used to me. When you expect something to happen it really happens. See the Mercedes seat control design -- completely behavioural, needs no explanation, push fwd to go fwd, etc. -- Reflective design: I have a watch that's hard hard to read, but is really neat and looks cool and I love to explain it to people. It's cool to need to RTFM, buy once you do, it should be blindingly obvious in hindsight. Here's a wee statue of the Eiffel Tower. It's kitsch, but it could be the most important possession in your home -- because of the story that accompanies it. That story is what reflective design is about. -- Some examples: Sound: a lot of our pretty things are irritating as hell because of the noise they make. Here's a teapot that makes a chord when the water boils. Why shouldn't the sound of tea-up be pretty? The Segway was designed so that the gears would be in octave harmonic relationships so that it would make a pleasant sound: the sound is just as nice as the riding experience. If design doesn't evince strong emotion -- love AND hate -- it's going to be mediocre, like the white "table-lamp" iMac. -- Field examples: Here's a Jacob Jensen alarm-clock. It's pretty, but completely unworkable: you can't set or read the time. But it's in the MOMA. Here's a test subject sneering at it, then falling in love with how beautiful it is. In the end, she chose the Timex because it was functional (but it felt junky, so they should put a leadd weight in the bottom). -- Why do people have emotions? They keep us from falling off cliffs, they make us curious, they allow us to socially communicate. See the Aibo Puppy: When it fails (misses the ball, etc) people say, "look how cute it is!" and are delighted. See Cynthia Grizzel's robot at MIT: it's really social. The software is purely emotional -- the goal is to make other people feel good, (the same way Kismet did) See the Honda Asimo -- it doesn't need to be humanoid, but there's a good reason for it anyway. -- Here's a deadlock scenario: Robot asks coffee maker for coffee, which asks pantry for cup, which asks dishwasher for cup, which asks robot for cup, which says, "I can't I'm waiting for coffee." Emotion can solve this: if you get stuck, you can "get frustrated" or "bored" and wander away and do something (like find a dirty cup and bring it back to the dishwasher). "Boredom" and other emotions in systems solve problems we can't anticipate with hill-climbing approaches. -- Q&A: What about "The Uncanny Valley?" The more person-like a robot is the more disturbing it is. eof