Emotional Design

Summary:
Visceral, behavioral, and reflective are three levels of processing. A design also needs to balance creativity and focus; when focus is low, creativity can be higher, but when a task requires high levels of focus, creativity should be low. 


Visceral design is tied to attractiveness, behavioral design is related to efficiency and pleasure of use, and reflective design is personal satisfaction, memories, and self-image. No matter what, no single design will satisfy all users, thus market segmentation becomes very important. Lastly, designs must balance what people "need" and what people "want," and this is not an easy task.

Visceral design is the built-in attractiveness, in which physical features dominate. Performance and use dominate in behavioral design, while attractiveness and rationale do not factor. Finally, reflective design is all about the meaning of the product, and how it connects with the user.
Discussion:
I didn't realize that the schedule was serious that we were supposed to write a full blog on this. I've forgotten a lot about this book, but I never really enjoyed it. I've stated this before, but I really don't enjoy Norman's books. This book did make me think about Apple products. People love them, but yet they don't really have a powerful design or product. People will overlook all the problems with Apple products just because it says "Apple." Apple got the visceral design perfect for the masses, and the behavioral aspect is pretty good for the first time users. Apple products (especially the laptops) generally don't annoy people or crash, so people will overlook the lack of power and still come away behaviorally satisfied. And since Apple succeeds in the two lower level aspects, in general the reflective aspect of their design succeeds. I think this is less true with their mobile devices, however, as I want to destroy my iPhone. Apple products made me realize just how true all the stuff Norman was claiming really is. That being said, I didn't even remotely consider finishing that book. Way too boring and repetitive.