The fourth chapter of this book is called “Emotional Engagement.”

I agreed with Ch. 4 when it was talking about how a surprise can amplify our emotional responses and create a strong imprint in our memory. I agree because I know my brain works in this way; if I see something out of the ordinary then it’s much more likely to be stuck in my mind. Then, I also agreed when the author further said that this surprise tactic can greatly help interface designers direct attention and shape behavior. His point was that the feeling of intense surprise can change a person’s mind to bypass cerebral judgements. This seems based in fact and I find that it makes a lot of sense. I also see throwing in a surprise element to be a good idea for a designer.

It was hard for me to find anything in this chapter that I disagreed with. But, I did manage to find one thing that is a little more surface level that I didn’t find nearly as interesting as the author was trying to make it. At one point he highlighted how Twitter made an interface change in 2010, and that the company released a tiny preview of it beforehand. The author portrayed this preview as genius, and I agree it was a smart move, but I don’t think it was necessarily worthy of all of the hype that it received. People were going crazy over this redesign and I can remember being a new user on Twitter during that and not caring about the minuscule changes that were made.