Emotional Design

Comments
Devin McKaskle

Description
Yet another book by Don Norman is Emotional Design. In this book Norman almost renounces everything he has said about design and tries to explain to us that emotions are a crucial part of the design of things. How objects make us feel reflects on how we feel about them. This is somewhat a reflection on The Media Equation. Norman describes certain rules of design and gives great examples showing his beliefs. Later in the book, Norman discusses robots with emotion and how they will be necessary in the future. Finally in Norman style he jumps into a wild creative spree at the end discusses rules presented by Isaac Asimov to prevent robots from rising up and destroying humanity.

I enjoyed this book just as much as every other Norman book, perhaps a little more than The Design of Everyday Things because the examples is presents are more timeless. I enjoyed his discussion human emotions and the division of emotional design into visceral, behavioral, and reflexive design. The part about the emotional robots was very fun to read.