Chapter 3 – Relections

I really liked what Walter had to say about the importance of personality in design. Some times we are to wrapped up with making sure that the design is functional that we lose what is unique about the company in the end. Likewise, when we are designing and make things that are innovate and fun we need to make sure that it matches the ‘personality’ of what we want our company to be. If we do not match our personality or make a design that is different than who we are, we can give mixed feelings to our customers.

One thing that I agreed with Walter about was how we must make sure to design for human-to-human interactions and not human-to-computer interactions. Making this distinction in our design choices is what will bring personality into our organization. This section had me thinking a lot about how Apple designs its computers or how the author mentioned how they designed their computers. He said that the Apple logo pulsates while in rest, at the same pace that an actual resting heart beat would. This simple design change creates a personality in Apple’s products, that they are more human than technology. In turn this makes people think of their appliances more like humans with actual personalities rather than equipment that is pre-programmed.

It is hard to disagree with this author because he has really amazing examples and evidence to support his opinions. However I would say I disagree with him when it comes to how people perceive personality. Walter mentioned that people can judged whether or not a personality is “authentic”.  I would argue that people do not really judge if something is authentic in personality or not, but that people can judge whether or not something was made with personality in mind. People know if something is real or not real, so really they are only judging the design of how something comes across. For example, watching a Pixar movie we all know that these characters are designed and not real. However, because we can judge an artist and designer based on how that character makes us feel than we can determine if they create personality or not. Kind of a hard thought to get across but what I am trying to say is we do not judge based on if something has personality or not . We judge based on if that personality resonates with us enough to illicit an emotional response.