Emotional Design II

"To the practitioner of human-centered design, serving customers means relieving them of frustration, of confusion, of a sense of helplessness. Make them feel in control and empowered. To the clever salesperson, just the reverse is true. If people don't really know what they want, then what is the best way to satisfy their needs? In the case of human-centered design, it is to provide them with the tools to explore by themselves, to try this and that, to empower themselves to success. To the sales staff, this is an opportunity to present themselves as rescuers 'in-shining-armor'"

I like this passage, because it explores the idea of purpose driven design, and of examining what you wish to accomplish as you design a product, this makes the case that "diesel" is not badly designed, simply that it accomplishes something different than what you think it should.

I think that of the three terms Norman uses, only 'Behavioral' could really be improved upon. Behavioral is somewhat cryptic, and as a result, 'interactive' might be a better term, but otherwise, Norman's terms make perfect sense once you understand them.

When a designer sets out to create a product, he should, ideally, begin with behavioral design, because the use of a product will largely dictate the importance of the other two factors. A watch for instance can be many things, and fall squarely into any of the three types of design, but the same watch is unlikely to fulfill all three adequately, in fact the designer of a watch will likely have a very good idea which of the three is paramount before they even begin the meat of the design process; the designer of the Casio G-Shock, for example, should have no uncertainty as to the fact that his product will have virtually no visceral or reflective value, and that it will be purchased solely for it's behavioral ability.