Norman, D. (2004). Emotional Design. New York: Basic Books. [chapters 1–4]
Norman is best at analyzing design, and he thankfully devotes a good deal of the book to analyzing the affective character of objects, interfaces, environments, new technologies, etc. I especially like his discussion of the aspects of music in relation to the human body. As far as Norman’s theoretical models, what bothers me is that I think he’s presenting them as authoritative science but it’s really all still speculation. He presents a model for the 3 levels of processing in the brain and for the relationship between emotion and cognition via these 3 pathways for processing. This model seems pretty reductive and hierarchical again- which leads Norman to make these kind of statements: “The result is that everything you do has both a cognitive and an affective component–cognitive to assign meaning, affective to assign value” (25). And then he argues for thinking about designing for the 3 levels of processing, so designing for visceral pleasure, designing for behavioral effectiveness (usability), and designing for reflective significance. But, as always, he admits that it’s not quite as simple as that. Well, whether or not emotion is generated or mediated through the 3 levels of processing as Norman proposes, it’s still possible and useful to think of the 3 levels as analytic categories, and look at the emotional effect of objects, things, etc. along these terms. But thinking about these 3 categories are not prescriptives for how to design for emotional effect.
Astleitner, H. (2000). Designing Emotionally Sound Instruction: The FEASP-Approach.
Astleitner’s article presents strategies for designing “emotionally sound” instruction, and provides a basic model for the 5 main affects to be concerned with in terms of design: Fear, Envy, Anger, Sympathy, Pleasure (acronym: FEASP). This seems to be pretty helpful discussion and the strategies, while they’re probably no surprise to good teachers, are also helpfully laid out in a systematic form so they provide a good reference. One of the strategies for counteracting the negative emotion of fear is to “ensure success in learning.” This strategy made me think of the design of children’s software where there is often a built in “accidental success” so that within the first five minutes of playing the software game, a kid will experience some kind of success in response to his/her action and be motivated to continue playing.
Sharp, H. (2007). Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction. Hoboken: Wiley.
A good introduction to affective aspects in design. Numerous examples of products, interfaces, etc. that were either designed to express affect (emotive robots and objects), or designed to produce affect (persuasive technologies), or even designed with the affective character of particular audiences in mind (nice example of the square and round dialog boxes designed for American & European males). And there is an overview of some of the better known (?) models that connect emotions with the design of objects, etc.- including Norman’s model, the Pleasure model (Patrick Jordan, 2000), and the Technology as experience framework (McCarthy and Wright, 2004).
