Assignment 4: Chapter 1 of Emotion Design

   "Emotion Design" opens with similar discoveries that the "Design of Everyday Things" had. A researcher put unique action-oriented design choices on an ATM in the Israeli culture and he was surprised to find that this increased usability of the machine by a large margin. In Japan, where the design originated, they favored a more simplistic design. The "Design of Everyday Things" mainly focused on good design choices with ease of use as a main factor and this paper talks about emotional design and how our emotions can appeal to our designs. While originally thought to be leftover from our animal instincts, emotions are not viewed as being strongest in humans and weakest in animals.

   Emotions can help in designs primary through incentives. In "Emotion Design", the author first touches on incentives for the user. If there is some positive item awarded to the user, they brainstorm more and are more likely to use the machine or solve the problem. On the contrary, these can also be used to frustrate the user which also conflicts with their emotions thus making them more likely to do the right thing. Humans have evolved over millions of years to solve more complex problems and develop more intense emotions.With emotions, humans can judge what is safe, dangerous, good, or bad. This affective system can also control our muscles physically with the different kind of chemicals being released and neurotransmitters being controlled.

   Humans possess three levels of processing: reflective, behavioral, and visceral. These three levels of processing interact with each other in a basic level. Animals primarily use visceral processing as they lack higher intelligence. Too much focus on one level of processing is a bad thing and can lead to poor designs. For instance, when humans are in danger, such as there being a fire in a building, they all rush to escape. The first thing they do to the door push it. They are so blindly focused on the visceral act of escaping, that they don't think to pull the door. In "Emotion Design", Designers have to take into account emotional design for all types of situations or there can be grave consequences. In "Design of Everyday Things", the primary objective was ease of use and simplicity of mapping and functions.
   Contrasting this from "Design of Everyday Things", the designs may or may not be the easiest design to use. They might use big embroidered letters and attractive designs that appeal to the users emotions that help them understand the product better. The designs in the first book mainly talked about images in the users' minds and how they formulated how to use it but in this book, the designs have to appeal to the senses first and make the user feel good in order to get objectives done. In conclusion, I really enjoyed the first chapter and can't wait to find out what the rest of the book holds. The ideas contrast very interesting with that of Donald Norman's first book.