I feel there is no better way to describe Donald Norman's Emotional Design that to compare with Design of Everyday Things. It was, simply put, a radical departure from that previous work of his that we read. It seemed to me that the author had some sort of enlightenment, since he went from disapproving of things that probably “won an award” to celebrating that visual aesthetic is also an important factor in the likability of a device. Honestly, I wonder what could have caused such a radical change in viewpoint. I would expect him to have grown more disillusioned with the visceral as time passed, not less so. It could be argued that he had an enlightenment that brought him from relative ignorance (though he hardly believed himself ignorant in the past) to the realization that people like things for more than just their uses. After all, someone had to design the thing in the first place; who would design what they did not like in someone short of being forced to do so? The worship of image that he claimed was detrimental in Design was a perfectly valid reason to produce an object in Emotional. If I had been told when reading Design that Norman was going to transform his mentality to nearly its polar opposite, I would have recommended that the person who informed me should stop lying. It is, after all, quite rare to completely alter one's viewpoint rather than simply changing it slightly. Fifteen years is a long time, but I am not certain that it is sufficiently long of a period.
I liked how he divided the dominant draws of an object into the visceral, behavioral, and reflective factors. His previous book left me wondering why he was so adamantly against beautiful objects that are just that and nothing more. In this book, though, he revealed the hypocrisy of his works: he too likes useless objects. Some of them are more than just knick-knacks, like his impossible tea kettle; they occupy a none-too-ignorable amount of space that he could have filled with more functional objects, like those he praised in Design. Considering he was so concerned with the operability of everyday objects in Design, I have to wonder if he was at all thinking about things that he didn't technically manipulate on a daily basis, but simply observed. Perhaps he thought that curiosities were not everyday enough to be considered. Regardless, I was pleased to see that he extended his definition of everyday objects to include those that are simply observed, not manipulated.
If I had a choice to read either this book or Norman's previous book and this one, I definitely would have selected just this one. Norman apparently is particularly fond of reusing material extensively. When I saw some of the examples (and images!) in Design reappear here, I was a little astonished. (I am, however, grateful that he spared us the wish for a portable computer organizer in this book.) I would understand the reuse of content if he was refuting his previous ideas, but only did this with some of the concepts. Without any background in his prior works, I feel I would have understood his ideas thoroughly. Of course, for all I know, he might have written two more books extolling the visceral and reflective attributes of objects. What I do know is that I hardly needed a further explanation of the same, with the thoroughness with which Norman writes. Perhaps that is why I am so frustrated with Norman. I don't mind his writing style too much, besides the fact that he tends to overexplain a concept. With his previous book, the last chapter taught me all I needed to know. Similarly, this one taught me all that I needed to know about the other book. His writing was actually less dense and more accessible, but still just as informative.
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