Emotional Design -Sept.29

1. The following passage is from Donald Norman's Emotional Design.
            Human responses to the everyday things of the world are complex, determined by a wide variety of factors. Some of these are outside the person, controlled by designer and manufacturer, or by advertising such things as brand image. And some come form within, from your own, privates experiences. Each of the three levels of design- viseral, behavioral, and reflective-plays its part in shaping your experienc. Each is as important as the others, but requires a different approach by the designer.
  I found this passage to be very interesting. Like most of his writing he explains topics with words that we can only related to by instincts.This is what makes this reading interesting. Norman mentions that each design gives off a response, but because it is a response we dont realize that those factors contribute to why we have the products we have and why we dont have other products.

2.Viseral design , behavioral design and reflective design seem to be useful categories but the categories could be a little more clearer by renaming the categories.For viseral design, I would rephrase it as  "Natural Reaction to a Design" because this level has to do with your instinctual reaction to a design. I would rename behavioral design to be the "Performance of a Design" because this level has to deal with a design's function, usability, understandablilty, and physical feel. Reflective design should be called the " Message/ Meaning of a Design" because this level has to do with the image your trying to portray as the person buying the design or it could be the meaning the design portrays.

3. I think that a designer will have some trouble deciding which level of design is more important because eventually their product will have to adhere to all three levels of design.Since each level of design is as imporatant as the other they cant be underweighed or overweighed.In my opinion, most porducts are reflective because its what the product means to you as in individual. Everyone has different items they own that bring back memories or has special meaning.