Don Norman says that design is beauty and his new life is about understanding what beauty is about, which more than often seems to apply to our lives a lot. Norman suggests that things that we find " fun and neat" which might not necessarily be useful can influence our desire for these products. An example that he chooses is Phillipe Stark's juicer, it is beautiful and sleek but when using it, is actually quite difficult to juice. People sometimes buy these products for their original purposes but in the end find that they become a way to connect people through its peculiar design, as they draw attention and spark conversation or interest.
Don Norman suggests that design is split into three levels, the visceral, the behavioural and the reflective, these become a structure of how you can understand the emotions behind design.
The Visceral level is, related to the biology of design, how the product has feature which communicate to us on a subconscious level, where we can immediately join the dots between features of a product and feelings/reactions we get from it. Like saying we can relate things like colour and symmetry, have more appeal and draw us to it or saying we see things that are pleasing, glass water bottles compared to plastic ones, we don't buy the bottle for the water, we buy the bottle to reuse it later as a vase or room decor, rather plastic bottles we buy it for the water but only to reuse it for more water later.
Behavioural experience is also on a subconscious level, automatic behaviour and controlled behaviour is also part of this experience. Design relates to this because as a consumer, you want to feel in control of what you buy and what you own. Norman explains this in the video by comparing it to a consumer purchasing a high performance sports car and driving it into difficult terrains, and being able to feel the power and subconsciously feeling the control of your environment. He also says that behavioural design allows for the design to communicate, as it gives an emotive sense to designs, where it communicates when things are safe or dangerous and we emote by being relaxed or being anxious.
The final layer is, the Reflective level of consciousness, this is relating to the choices of a persons consciousness, where we can feel the right and wrong in products or design. Like how we can make different decisions about how we want to portray our choices. Norman compares this in the video to how we make choices about buying products which reflect our actions, like buying and electronically powered car so you can be more eco friendly. It is like saying when you see something that is sturdy you feel safe and will buy a product for that reason, whereas if you see the same product but it is slightly broken or dirty, it detracts from the original safe feeling and subconsciously you know you wont buy the product
Overall, Don Norman's explanation of the 3 levels of design gives and insight to how to achieve a good design and what we might have to overcome or experience before we can attain an understanding of it. Even though we feel we our lives can be mundane, subconsciously we are progressing through everyday with the design experience, the things that we may come across in a short days time, all have their stories which we subconsciously understand yet we fall short to notice until you begin to get insights about how design works with us emotively.
Design make me happy, and every page of my design story fills with knowledge and inspiration.
No comments:
Post a Comment