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Tag: Don Norman

  • Successful products vs Magical products – Key takeaway from “Emotional Design”

    “Emotional Design” by Don Norman beautifully highlights the difference between a successful product and a magical product.

    Successful Product – A product born out of prototype creation , repeated testing and re-design.This is the standard process of creating a product that sells and enables the maker to make profits.The recipe is very simple , follow the standard processes of product design.

    Magical Product – Now there is no clear receipt for creating such a product for e.g. iPhone , iPod etc.The only pattern that we see is that such products have been created by visionaries and have involved high financial risks worth the final outcome when the product sell gathers momentum. Had there been a clear recipe , had these followed standard processes and been time boxed  all successful products would have become magical products.

  • Extending brain’s perception of successful product design to movies

    Don Norman in his book Emotional Design draws a great comparison between successful product design to great movies.

    He mentions the three V concept and relates human brain perception to truly successful movies.

    1st V – Visceral – Lizard brain characteristic that gets turned on by appearance , sounds , lights and external show.

    2nd V – Vicarious – This relates to behavioural characteristic wherein subconsciously a viewer keeps himself in the shoes of the actors and gets turned on momentarily.

    3rd V – Voyeuristic – Most important and leads to memories as a result of which we repeatedly watch certain great movies.

    Awesome analogy drawn by the author in making us realise the role of human Brain in making movies memorable ones.A truly great movie thus should have all the three aspects in the right balance.

  • How our brain interprets product design

    Emotional Design by Don Norman makes a mention of this.The three layers of the brain w.r.t product design interpretation summarised as follows:

    Visceral Layer – This is the layer of brain which gets turned on by attractiveness or appearance of product.

    Behavioural Layer – Gets turned on by performance or usability friendliness , robustness of product.

    Reflective Layer – This is the uniqueness of humans where memories caused due to fulfilment result in a everlasting impact.

  • How our brain interprets product design

    Emotional Design by Don Norman makes a mention of this.The three layers of the brain w.r.t product design interpretation summarized as follows:

    Visceral Layer – This is the layer of brain which gets turned on by attractiveness or appearance of product.

    Behavioral Layer – Gets turned on by performance or usability friendliness , robustness of product.

    Reflective Layer – This is the uniqueness of humans where memories caused due to fulfillment result in a everlasting impact.

  • Processing of Human Brain – Key takeaways from “Emotional Design” by Don Norman

    The processing of brain , as mentioned by Don Norman in Emotional Design , in humans involves the following major layers:

    1) Visceral layer – This is called “lizard brain” and is related to emotions only.This is at the core of the human brain.

    2)Behavioural Layer – This relates to the habit patterns that can be honed by practice and can be performed sub-consciously.This is ingrained in dogs/horses as well as other animals who can be trained.

    3)Reflective Layer – This is the rational brain that makes humans separate from other animals.

    Human feelings guided by human Brain is an interplay of the above three layers.