Emotional Design

by Donald A. Norman

  The concept of self appears to be a fundamental human attribute. It is difficult to imagine how it could be otherwise, given what we know of the mechanisms of mind and the roles that consciousness and emotion play. The concept is deeply rooted in the reflective level of the brain and highly dependent upon cultural norms. It is, therefore, difficult to deal with in design.

  In psychology, the study of the self has become a big industry, with books, societies, journals, and conferences. But “self ” is a complex concept: It is culturally specific. Thus, Eastern and Western notions of self vary considerably, with the West placing more emphasis on the individual, the East on the group. Americans tend to want to excel as individuals, whereas Japanese wish to be good members of their groups and for others to be satisfied with their contributions. But even these characterizations are too broad and oversimplified. In fact, on the whole, people behave very similarly, given the same situation. It is culture that presents us with different situations. Thus, Asian cultures are more likely to establish a sharing, group attitude than are the cultures of Europe and the Americas, where individualistic situations are more common. But put Asians in an individualistic situation and Europeans or Americans in a social, sharing situation, and their behaviors are remarkably similar.

  Some aspects of self seem to be universal, such as the desire to be well-thought-of by others, even if the behavior others praise differs across cultures. This desire holds both in the most individualistic societies, which admire deviance, and in the most group-oriented societies, which admire conformance.

  The importance of other people’s opinions is, of course, well known to the advertising industry, which tries to promote products through association. Take any product and show it alongside happy, contented people. Show people doing things that an intended purchaser is likely to fantasize about, such as romantic vacations, skiing, exotic locations, eating in foreign lands. Show famous people, people who serve as role models or heroes to the customers, to induce in them, through association, a sense of worthiness. Products can be designed to enhance these aspects. In clothing fashion, one can have clothes that are neat and trim or baggy and nondescript, each deliberately inducing a different image of self. When company or brand logos are imprinted on clothes, luggage, or other objects, the mere appearance of the name speaks to others about your sense of values. The styles of objects you choose to buy and display often reflect public opinion as much as behavioral or visceral elements. Your choice of products, or where and how you live, travel, and behave are often powerful statements of self, whether intended or not, conscious or subconscious. For some, this external manifestation compensates for an internal, personal lack of self-esteem. Whether you admit it or not, approve or disapprove, the products you buy and your lifestyle both reflect and establish your self-image, as well as the images others have of you.

  One of the more powerful ways to induce a positive sense of self is through a personal sense of accomplishment. This is one aspect of a hobby, where people can create things that are uniquely theirs, and, through hobby clubs and groups, share their achievements.

  From the late 1940s through the mid-1980s the Heathkit Company sold electronic kits for the home handyperson. Build your own radio, your own audio system, your own television set. The people who constructed the kits felt immense pride in their accomplishments as well as a common bond with other kit builders. Putting together a kit was a personal feat: the less skilled the kit builder, the more that special feeling. Electronic experts did not take such pride in their kits; it was those who ventured forth without the expertise who felt so satisfied. Heathkit did an excellent job of aiding the first-time builder with what, in my opinion, were the best instruction manuals ever written. Mind you, the kits were not much less expensive than equivalent commercial electronic devices. People bought the kits for their high quality and for the feeling of accomplishment, not to save money.

  In the early 1950s, the Betty Crocker Company introduced a cake mix so that people could readily make excellent tasting cakes at home. No muss, no fuss: just add water, mix, and bake. The product failed, even though taste tests confirmed that people liked the result. Why? An after-the-fact effort was made to find the reasons. As the market researchers Bonnie Goebert and Herma Rosenthal put it: “The cake mix was a little too simple. The consumer felt no sense of accomplishment, no involvement with the product. It made her feel useless, especially if somewhere her aproned mom was still whipping up cakes from scratch.”

  Yes, it was too easy to make the cake. Betty Crocker solved the problem by requiring the cook to add an egg to the mix, thereby putting pride back into the activity. Clearly, adding an egg to a prepared cake mix is not at all equivalent to baking a cake “from scratch” by using individual ingredients. Nonetheless, adding the egg gave the act of baking a sense of accomplishment, whereas just mixing water into the cake mix seemed too little, too artificial. Goebert and Rosenthal summarized the situation: “The real problem had nothing to do with the product’s intrinsic value, but instead represented the emotional connection that links a product to its user.” Yes, it’s all about emotion, about pride, about the feeling of accomplishment, even in making a cake from a prepared mix.

  The Personality of Products

  As we have seen, a product can have a personality. So, too, can companies and brands. Consider my proposed transformation of the video game device discussed earlier in this chapter. In one version, the machine would be a fast, powerful tool for exciting, visceral experiences: loud booming sounds and fast-paced adventure. In a different version, it would be a cooking assistant: animated, but informative, with menus for meals and videos that demonstrate just how to prepare the food. In still another, it might be calm, but authoritative, guiding repair work on an automobile or construction of woodworking projects.

  In each manifestation, that product’s personality would change. The product would look and behave differently in the different settings appropriate to use and target audience. The style of behavioral interaction could differ: filled with slang and informal language in the game setting; polite and formal for the kitchen. But like human personality, once established, all aspects of a design must support the intended personality structure. A mature cooking tutor should not suddenly start spouting obscenities. A shop assistant should probably not discuss the philosophical implications of quality in automobile design, quoting from R. M. Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance whenever a repair is attempted.

  Figure 2.3

  Fashion from the seventeenth century.

  On the left, Maria Anna of Bavaria, crown princess of France. On the right, a “young elegant.”

  (Braun et al., courtesy of

  Northwestern University Library.)

  Personality is, of course, a complex topic in its own right. A simplified way of thinking of product personality is that it reflects the many decisions about how a product looks, behaves, and is positioned throughout its marketing and advertisements. Thus, all three levels of design play a role. Personality must be matched to market segment. And it must be consistent. Think about it. If a person or product has an obnoxious personality, at least you know what to expect: you can plan for it. When behavior is inconsistent and erratic, it is difficult to know what to expect, and occasional positive surprises are not enough to overcome the frustration and irritation caused by never quite knowing what to expect.

  The personalities of products, companies, and brands need as much tending to as the product itself.

  The American Heritage Dictionary defines fashion, style, mode, and vogue thus: “These nouns refer to a prevailing or preferred manner of dress, adornment, behavior, or way of life at a given time. Fashion, the broadest term, usually refers to what accords with conventions adopted by polite society or by any culture or subculture: a time when long hair was the fashion. Style is sometimes used interchangeably with fashion, but like mode often stresses adherence to standards of elegance: traveling in style; miniskirts that were
the mode in the late sixties. Vogue is applied to fashion that prevails widely and often suggests enthusiastic but short-lived acceptance: a video game that was in vogue a few years ago.”

  The very existence of the terms fashion, style, mode, and vogue demonstrates the fragility of the reflective side of design. What is liked today may not be tomorrow. Indeed, the reason for the change is the very fact that something was once liked: When too many people like something, then it is no longer deemed appropriate for the leaders of a society to partake of it. After all, goes the thinking, how can one be a leader unless one is different, doing today what others will do tomorrow, and doing tomorrow what they will be doing after that? Even the rebellious have to change continually, carefully noticing what is in fashion so as not to be following it, carefully creating their own fashion of counterfashion.

  How does a designer cope with popular taste if it has little to do with substance? Well, it depends upon the nature of the product and the intentions of the company producing it. If the product is something fundamental to life and well-being, then the proper response is to ignore continual shifts in popular sentiment and aim for long-lasting value. Yes, the product must be attractive. Yes, it should be pleasurable and fun. But it must also be effective, understandable, and appropriately priced. In other words, it must strive for balance among the three levels of design.

  In the long run, simple style with quality construction and effective performance still wins. So a business that manufactures office machines, or basic home appliances, or web sites for shipping, commerce, or information, would be wise to stick to the fundamentals. In these cases, the task dictates the design: make the design fit the task, and the product works more smoothly and is bound to be more effective across a wide range of users and uses. Here is where the number of different products is determined by the nature of particular tasks and the economics.

  There is a set of products, however, whose goals are entertainment, or style, or perhaps enhancement of a person’s image. Here is where fashion comes into play. Here is where the huge individual differences in people and cultures are important. Here the person and market segment dictate the design. Make the design appropriate to the market segment that forms the target audience. It is probably necessary to have multiple versions of the design for different market segments. And it is probably necessary to do rapid changes in style and appearance as the market dictates.

  Designing for the whims of fashion is tricky. Some designers may see it as a difficult challenge, others, as an opportunity. In some sense, the division often breaks between large and small companies, or between market leaders and the competition. To the market leader, the continual changes in people’s fashion, and the wide variety of preferences for the same product across the world, are huge challenges. How can the company ever keep up? How does it track all the changes and even anticipate them? How does it keep the many necessary product lines effective? To the competitive companies, however, the same issues represent an opportunity. Small companies can be nimble, moving rapidly into areas and using approaches that the more conservative larger companies hesitate to try. Small companies can be outrageous, different, and experimental. They can exploit the public’s interests, even if the product is initially purchased by only a few. Large companies attempt to experiment by spinning off smaller, more nimble divisions, sometimes with unique names that make them appear to be independent of their parent. All in all, this is the ever-changing, continual battleground of the consumer marketplace, where fashion can be as important as substance.

  IN THE world of products, a brand is an identifying mark, the symbol that represents a company and its products. Particular brands produce an emotional response that draws the consumer toward the product or away from it. Brands have taken on the emotional representation. They carry with them an emotional response that guides us toward a product or away from it. Sergio Zyman, former chief marketing officer of Coca-Cola, has said that “emotional branding is about building relationships; it is about giving a brand and a product long-term value.” But it is more: it involves the entire relationship of the product to the individual. Again, in Zyman’s words: “Emotional branding is based on that unique trust that is established with an audience. It elevates purchases based on need to the realm of desire. The commitment to a product or an institution, the pride we feel upon receiving a wonderful gift of a brand we love or having a positive shopping experience in an inspiring environment where someone knows our name or brings an unexpected gift of coffee—these feelings are at the core of Emotional Branding.”

  Some brands are simply informative, essentially naming a company or its product. But on the whole, the brand name is a symbol that represents one’s entire experience with a product and the company that produces it. Some brands represent quality and high prices. Some represent a focus upon service. Some represent value for money. And some brands stand for shoddy products, for indifferent service, or for inconvenience at best. And, of course, most brand names are meaningless, carrying no emotional power at all.

  Brands are all about emotions. And emotions are all about judgment. Brands are signifiers of our emotional responses, which is why they are so important in the world of commerce.

  THIS CONCLUDES part I of the book: the basic tools of emotional design. Attractive things do work better—their attractiveness produces positive emotions, causing mental processes to be more creative, more tolerant of minor difficulties. The three levels of processing lead to three corresponding forms of design: visceral, behavioral, and reflective. Each plays a critical role in human behavior, each an equally critical role in the design, marketing, and use of products. Now it is time to explore how this knowledge is put to work.

  PART TWO

  Design in Practice

  FIGURE 3.1

  Water bottles. The ones on the left and the right are clearly aimed to please at the visceral level; the middle one, well, it is efficient, it is inexpensive, and it works. The bottle on the left, for Perrier water, has become so well known that the shape and its green color are the brand. The bottle on the right is by TyNant, a bottle of such a pleasant shape coupled with its deep, cobalt blue color that people save the empty ones to use as vases. The clear plastic bottle is by Crystal Geyser: simple, utilitarian, effective when you need to carry water with you.

  (Author’s collection.)

  CHAPTER THREE

  Three Levels of Design: Visceral, Behavioral, and Reflective

  I remember deciding to buy Apollinaris, a German mineral water, sim-

  ply because I thought it would look so good on my shelves. As it

  turned out, it was a very good water. But I think I would have bought

  it even though it was not all that great.

  The nice interplay between the bottle’s green and the label’s beige

  and red as well as the font used for the brand turned this product of

  mass consumption into a decoration accessory for your kitchen.

  —Hugues Belanger email, 2002

  IT WAS LUNCHTIME. My friends and I were in downtown Chicago, and we decided to try Café des Architectes in the Sofitel Hotel. As we entered the bar area, a beautiful display greeted us: water bottles, the sort you can buy in a food market, set out as works of art. The entire rear wall of the bar was like an art gallery: frosted glass, subtly lit from behind, from floor to ceiling; shelves in front of the glass, each shelf dedicated to a different type of water. Blue, green, amber—all the wonderful hues, the glass gracefully illuminating them from behind, shaping the play of color. Water bottles as art. I resolved to find out more about this phenomenon. How did the packaging of water become an art form?

  “Walk down a grocery aisle in any town in the U.S., Canada, Europe, or Asia and there is a virtual tidal wave of bottled water brands,” is how one web site that I consulted put it. Another web site emphasized the role of emotion: “Package designers and brand managers are looking beyond graphic elements or even the design as a whole to forge
an emotional link between consumers and brands.” The selling of premium bottled water in major cities of the world, where the tap water is perfectly healthful, has become a big business. Water sold in this way is more expensive than gasoline. Indeed, the cost is part of the attraction where the reflective side of the mind says, “If it is this expensive, it must be special.”

  And some of the bottles are special, sensuous, and colorful. People keep the empty bottles, sometimes refilling them with tap water, which, of course, demonstrates that the entire success of the product lies in its package, not its contents. Thus, like wine bottles, water bottles serve as decorative additions to rooms long after they have fulfilled their primary purpose. Witness another web site: “almost everyone who enjoys TyNant Natural Mineral Water admits to keeping one or two around the home or office as an ornament, vase or the like. Photographers positively delight in the bottles’ photogenic appeal.” (In figure 3.1, the bottle with the flower in it is TyNant.)

  How does one brand of water distinguish itself from another? Packaging is one answer, distinctive packaging that, in the case of water, means bottle design. Glass, plastic, whatever the material, the design becomes the product. This is bottling that appeals to the powerful visceral level of emotion, that causes an immediate visceral reaction: “Wow, yes, I like it, I want it.” It is, as one designer explained to me, the “wow” factor.