3 Ways to Understand Design (and everything else)
Don Norman has been a design hero of mine for many years. As a cognitive scientist and co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group he has helped many companies produce human-centred product and services, world leaders in research-based user experience. And if that weren’t enough, he’s also a professor of computer science.
The main body of his work has been the relationship of emotion and design, and his book, Emotional Design, remains one of the most influential books about design.
His simple observation that there are 3 basic ways to understand design [and everything we create], Visceral, behavioural and reflective, absolutely changed my thinking for ever.
This short video of his TedTalk sums up the simple but profound approach to understand the relationship between us and everything we come into contact with.
Beauty, fun and pleasure all work together to produce enjoyment, a state of positive affect. Most scientific studies of emotion have focused upon the negative side, upon anxiety, fear and anger. Even though fun, joy and pleasure are the desired attributes of life.
Fear and anxiety make us focus, but joy and pleasure make problem solving easier.
Norman gives the example of laying a simple plank on the floor, which we can walk along, do cartwheels on and play around with. Yet if we place exactly the same plank 20 metres in the air between two buildings, we will think twice about how we cross it.
Emotions are always centred on things we care about, emotions cause actions, usually before we have time to think about it. Working at the subconscious level, emotions silently guide our decision-making and the choices we make, and, in terms of interacting with objects and environments, they steer us towards our likes and loves and our dislikes and hates. They are the Hyde to our rational, conscious Jekyll. This level of interaction is what Don Norman calls Visceral.
Visceral Design.
Visceral is at the level of biology, it is our automatic, subconscious thinking [most of what we do]. As he explains you buy something not just for its utility but for the way it makes you feel. Beautiful objects seduce our emotions. Here the physical features – look, feel and sound dominate. Visceral design is all about immediate emotional impact. He gives the example of the E-type Jaguar (a thing of great beauty, although not very reliable). We have an uncanny ability to bond emotionally with objects and environments. The seduction is real.
Behavioural Design.
Behavioral design is all about use. Appearance doesn’t really matter. Rationale doesn’t matter. Performance does. What we might nowadays call the “fit for purpose” (user friendly or user experience would be mixed with the pleasure of use, i.e. visceral). A first step in good behavioral design is to understand how people will use a product or environment. Usability is a complex topic. A product that does what is required, and is understandable, may still not be usable. For instance, Guitars and Violins do their assigned tasks well (that is create music, they are simple to understand, but they are difficult to use. Badly conceived behavioral design can lead to great frustration. Good behavioral design is human-centred, focusing on understanding and satisfying the needs of the people who actually use the product.
Reflective design.
Finally, Reflective design is all about message. It’s about culture, story and the meaning of a product of its use. Honestly though, it’s impossible to design without making assumptions [more about assumptions in the coming weeks]. Whenever we design something, we always have in mind the human form, the gender, outlook, cultural norms of the end user. This is why we value things, such as art, for their provenance, for the stories they bring with them.
Don Norman believes that beauty comes from the reflective level. He says that beauty looks below the surface. Beauty comes from conscious reflection and experience. It is influenced by knowledge, learning and culture.
It seems that it’s often to do with the meanings we attach to objects and environments that make them important for us. But it’s also beauty, fun and pleasure often work together to produce enjoyment.
