Don Norman on Design and Emotion (Video)

How can you use what is known about design and emotion to better your building projects? To give you a better idea of how emotion is integral to design, you should watch the following video. Many of the concepts will ring true for building design and other forms of creative thinking. Watch for the three emotional cues that most designs should achieve to be successful.

You can read more about Don Norman here: http://www.ted.com/speakers/don_norman.html

WHY DO GOOD DESIGNS WORK?

Emotion is an integral part of any design and to understand why a good design works, you need to uncover how emotion works for that design. Although theories about emotional design can be applied to most all design types, such theories are particularly true for architecture.

Buildings do trigger human emotion. Hospitals, schools, libraries and office buildings can all trigger human response. For example, occupant experience is inextricably linked with occupant emotion, and architectural designs that ignore this suffer.

THE PLEASANT-FACTOR

As architects, we can all relate to aesthetic concerns that Don Norman expresses. Design as beauty is something that most all architects maintain as a priority. However, what about design as “fun”? Don Norman’s simple yet meaningful statement that “pleasant things work better” is both true and something to keep in mind while you design.

Of course, we all want our creations to be pleasant, but it is easy for the “pleasant-factor” to slowly creep away as we solve other design problems. For this reason, I think that Norman’s explanation of the three emotional cues of all successful designs is a great thing to keep in mind.

TRIGGERING EMOTION

The visceral, behavioral and reflective triggers are a great way to think about how design and occupant experience might play out. Often, it seems that architects build with just a portion of what might make their design really successful. The key is for good designs to integrate all three triggers – the visceral, behavioral and reflective.

Norman explains that the behavioral level of occupant processing can deal with design usability, understanding, feelings of control, sensual feelings and interpretation. As you can see, there are many ways to trigger human response – some will be more obvious while others might be more subtle.

HITTING THE “SWEET-SPOT”

Designing a great work is like hitting the “sweet-spot” on a tennis racket. The design often merges a combination of factors, deeming it (as Norman would say) “beautiful, fun and pleasant”. Architecture is about experience, creating environments where occupants don’t just feel comfortable but actually feel good carrying out their individual functions or just simply being in the space.

Great architecture “strikes a chord” where cultural, functional and aesthetic solutions work — perhaps this is greatly due to that building’s ability to tap into just the right human emotions through design.

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