Emotional Design By Donald Norman

1. The design of a product can impulse consumers into buying the product. There are three levels of design which can trigger people's emotion, visceral, behavioral and reflective.
The visceral level origins from environmental signals that attract humans due to the bright colors. For instance, some water bottle companies have made water into art by giving them an appealing shape with intriguing, bright colors. The water bottles give the consumers a message that they must buy this product. People purchase this overly priced bottle because of its visceral design.
In behavioral design, functionality is the first priority. A product must have functionality or the design falls apart. It is often difficult to discover what this functionality should be because it is hard to find out what people need, since people are not aware of their needs. Surveys, will not work, therefore designers would have to observe them in their natural environment.
Reflective design focuses on memories that the product evokes. Designers concentrate more on design than functionality. Take for example, the swatch. It is an emotion's company. They make watches into fashion statements. Swatches are watches that tell more than time. The reason is simple, beauty comes from the reflective level; therefore people usually prefer asthetically pleasing designs as opposed to the norm.

2. Chapter 3 (emotional design) introduce new topics on design. The "Design of Everyday Things" focus on all Behavioral levels of design, while Chapter 3 elaborates on Visceral and Reflective designs. Norman explains the strategies that businesses use to convince consumers in purchasing products. In "Design of Everyday Things", Norman concentrates more on the usage issue of products.

3. I have brought a Fuji water bottle for 4 dollars in a grocery store. My main reason for choosing it over Poland Springs is because the visceral design of the bottle. It is rectangularly shaped and it has beautiful bottle label of the forest flowers all over it. As soon as I had a glimpsed of the Fuji bottle, I knew I wanted to buy it. Although the water itself contains more oxygen in it than a Poland Spring water bottle persay, I bought the Fuji water bottle because I wanted to use the bottle for decorations.

My Airforce One sneakers is a really good example of Behavioral Design. I've used it for four years and I am still wearing it to school. The sneakers are black so they do not get dirty as quick as other colored sneakers. In addition, the heels are made of rubbers so it does not slid off when walking slippery floors. The shoes are comfortable and easy to wear.

A reflective design would be my swatch watch. It is very thin and silver color. The watch is very trendy and useful at the same time. There are numbers labeled on the watch so it's easy to read the time. The flowery designs are asthetically pleasing. It has warranty and it is durable. It is a success because swatch watches are more than a watch that tells time because it is a fashion statement!