2004-02-12

Emotional Design: The Principles 
http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/et2004/view/e_sess/4979


"pretty is nice. so make it pretty, make it nice."

talking about the world of consumer products.

no one cares about the technology, that's the infrastructure that makes it work.
people care about the outside.

bad: http://flashmaster.com/index.htm
vs
good: Mini Cooper (metal toggle switches that click when you toggle them)
[maybe the flashmaster is like the horton plaza. design for confusion. it's
exciting to figure out how to get to the game.]

a bit of theory:

two information processing systems in the head:
cognition (thinks about the world) and emotion (judges the world)

three levels in the brain:
- visceral (detects cliffs, bitter tastes. hardwired. fruit has coevolved with
mammals. we're afraid of heights, crowds, and emptiness (no jungleness, no
plains). this is attractiveness, surface [this is spectacle. I'd prefer the
smell, the *inside* version.] advertising is here)
- behavioral (all the work gets done here. computers are behavioral.
subconscious. we're not aware of the words we say until we've said them.
usability, function.)
- reflective. (the part that looks at itself.)


"when you're nervous or excited you become a depth-first processor: you're
focused."


the display of food in restaurants makes it taste better. when you wash and
polish your car it drives better.

if you're in a good mood, the hormones make you more tolerant of small problems.
if you're not, small problems make you even more tense and nervous.


on remote controls:

"i don't want to control my dvd. i want to watch a movie."


when you ask people what there most valued possessions are, it's not great art,
it's usually tat. a model of the eifel tower, a worn chair -- there are stories
here. this is the reflective part.

emotional affordances. that's what cell phone cameras are about.


some examples of emotional design:

a kettle that instead of whistling it produces a harmonic chord
- the segway gears are in octave relationships so the noise is makes is a
pleasant sound

imac. some people love, some people hate
- sign of great design. if you design by user testing you'll get good design,
but never great design. that's okay that some people hate it: you're not selling
to everyone. all products are niche products.

sony aibo is really good because people don't expect puppies to be able to do
anything. so if the aibo can't do something, that's a good thing, people say:
"it's just like a puppy, it can't even do that!"


describes a deadlock situation where different robots in the house get stuck in
a loop (the household robot asking for a coffee, but also being asked for a mug,
and the mug is in the path for the coffee)... but there are loads of deadlocks
that are really difficult to solve (unless you know about it beforehand):

the emotional system is a weak method for getting us out of deadlocks: boredom
and frustration.


q: risk of robots that look cute or like people: you risk falling into the
uncanny ballet. it's got emotion but it's not real emotion.

a: don doesn't want fake human emotions, he wants real machine emotions.