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Usability Guru Donald Norman adds emotion to reason: attracting objects work better.

Escaping the Christmas shopping frenzy in Barcelona I stopped at the RAS bookstore/gallery. The truth is that it doesn’t have to be Christmas to spend a lot of money on expensive design books there. But not this time. I just dropped by to wish my friends there a Merry Christmas with the resolute mind of not buying any design book.

To my surprise I found a copy of “Emotional Design, Why We Love or Hate Everyday Things” by usability guru Donald Norman. On the cover a picture of Philippe Starck’s much acclaimed lemon squeezer. I couldn’t help buying it.

In his new book Norman adds emotion to usability, being his thesis that attracting objects actually work better. Don’t think so? Think of how your car seems to run faster when you just washed it or how wine tastes better in designer cups.

This also seems to be true in the case of the ubiquous iPod. Apparently, it is not the best mp3 player in the world (some competitors toss in radio and voice recording for half the price) but it has 80% of the market. Nobody can deny it’s a well crafted piece of technology but the sexyness of its design is its top selling quality, and we expect to get some by owning it and showing our white earbuds in the metro.

We definitely establish emotional links with objects around us and we hope they help us to establish emotional links with people around us (this would be another thesis though).

To me, the cover of the book is not the best example of good design nor are Philippe Starck’s designs but in spite of that I bought the book anyway. I probably wouldn’t have bought it if I were to judge by the cover and didn’t know about Norman and his works, but knowing him, design was of little importance.



Does Norman’s thesis hold true for the book itself?

As for Philippe Starck’s website use it at your own risk. Poor design, it still uses frames, and full screen navigation! I couldn’t get the URL for the lemon squeezer on the cover of the book. This should tell you something about design.

Buy this book at Amazon Emotional Design by Donald Norman