assignment 2

EMOTIONAL DESIGN

In the early 1900s,Herbert Read wrote numerous books on art and aesthectics stated ,it requires a somewhat mystical theory of aesthetics to find any necessary connection between beauty and function.The psychologist Alice Isen and her colleagues have shown that being happy broadens the thought processes and facilitates creative thinking.When you feel good isen discovered you are better at brainstorming at examining multiple alternatives.When peopleare anxious they tend to narrow their thought processes concentrating upon aspects directly relevant to a problem .This is useful strategyin escaping from danger but not in thinking of imaginative new approaches to a problem.In other words happy people are more effective in finding alternative solutions and as a result are tolerant of minor difficulties.

Three different levels of the brain .the automatic prewired layer called the visceral level the part that contains the brain processes that control everyday behavior known as the behavioural level and the contemplative part of the brain or the refelective level.At the highest evolutionary level of development the human brain can think about its own operations .This is the home of reflection of conscious thought of the learning of new concepts and generalizations about the world.The result is that everything you do has both a cognitive and an affective component cognitive to assign meaning affective to assign value.Possitive affect arouses curiosity engages creativity and makes the brain into an effective learning organism with positive affect ,you are more likely to see the forest than the trees to prefer the big picture and not to concentrate upon details .On the other hand when you are sad or anxious feeling negative affect you are more likely to see the trees before the forest the details before the big picture.

The dangers of too much focus are well known to people who study accidents.Special design and training is required of people if we want them to perform well under high stress .Basically because of the extreme focus and tunnel vision anduced by high anxiety the situation has to be designed to minimize the need for creative thought.

Human language comes from the behavioural and reflective levels it provides a good example of how biological predispositions mix with experience.The human brain comes ready for language the architecture of the brain ,the way the different components are structured and interact constrains the very nature of language.Emotions moods,traits and personality are all aspects of the different ways in which people’s minds work, especially along the affective emotional domain.Emotions change behaviour over a relatively short term, for they are responsive to the immediate events.Emotions last for relatively short periods minutes or hours.The behavioural and reflective levels however are very sensitive to experiences training and education,cultural views have huge impact here,what one culture finds appealing another may not indeed teenage culture seems to dislike things solely because adult culture likes them.

First the most basic visceral level responds with pleasure to seeing the well designed lether case and gleaming stainless steel instruments and to feeling their comfortable heft.This conflict among different levels of emotion is common in design,A successful design has to excel at all levels,the design requirements for each level differ widely.Performance is about how well the product does those desired functions usability describes the ease with which the user of the product can understand how it works and how to get it to perform.Third , the three levels the reflective one is the most vulnerable to variability through culture experience education and individual differences.Sophistication often brings with it a peculiar disdain for popular appeal where the very aspects of a design that make it appeal to many people distress some intellectuals.Although all people have roughly the same body shape the same number of limbs and the same mental apparatus in detail they differ considerably.To designers this means that no single design will satisfy everyone.

What is appropriate and indeed preferred in one setting may be most inappropriate and rejected in another.The distinction between the terms needs and wants is traditional way of describing the difference between what is truly necessary for a person’s activities needs versus what a person asks for (wants ).Product designers and marketing executives know that wants can often be more powerful than needs indetermining the success of a product.In the designer that object is important only as a symbol as a source of memory of associations.The word souvenir means.”a token of remembrance a memento”.In the world of design wetend to associate emotion with beauty,we build attractive things cute things colourful things,however important these attributes they are not what drive people in their everydaylives.We like attractive things because of the way they make us feel.And in the realm of feeling it is just as reasonable to become attached to and love things that are ugly as it is to dislike things that would be called attractive emotions reflect our personal experiences associations and memories.

The principles underlying viscera design are wired in consistent across people and cultures.If you design according to these rules,your design will always be attractive level,even if you design can readily become dated because this level is sensitive to cultural differences trends in fashion and continual fluctuation.Behavioral design is all about use .Appearence doesn’t really matter rationale doesn’t matter .Performance does this is the aspect of design that pracitioners in the usability community focus upon.what matter here are four components of good behavioural design function ,understandability, usability and physical feel.The first step in good behavioral design is to understand just how people will use a product . There are two kinds of product development enhancement and innovation ,enhancement means to take some existing product or service and make it better,innovation provides a completely new way of doing something.of the two ehnacements are much easier.

In the design of everyday things,I pointed out that there are three different mental image of any object.First is the image in the head of the designer call that the ‘designer’s model’.Then the image that the person using the device has of it and the way it works .Call thisthe user ‘s model.In an ideal world,the designer’s model and the user’s model should be identical and as a result the user understands and uses the item properly.Designers can communitcate with the eventual users only through the system image of a product.thus a good designer will make sure that the system image of the final design conveys the proper user model .The only way to find this out is through testing develop early prototypes then watch as people try to use.

Although reflective thought is the essence of great literature and art films and music web sites and products appealing to the intellect is no guarantee of success.For in the axalted realm of literature art and professional criticsm it would appear that when something can be clearly understood it is judged as flawed whereas when something is impenetrable it must of necessity be good.There is a fundamental conflict between the preferences of the popular audience and the desires of the intellectual and artistic community.