Designing for Emotion Chapter 2

This chapter of Designing for Emotion brought up many aspects of designing that I never thought would about having an effect on design–things like contrast, human nature and “baby-face bias”, or that our brains are trained to recognize large eyes, small nose, and a pronounced forehead as special and trustworthy. I agree with none more so than the aesthetic-usability principle. The fact that attractive things create a positive response, such as with Apple’s refined, aesthetically-pleasing, and usable interface.

Something I don’t agree with in this chapter is the how they introduce both the golden ratio for design and aesthetic-usability. They talk about the proportion of Twitter’s new interface using the golden ratio, and also about Ricardo Mestre’s web design which is aesthetically-pleasing but unconventional and not proportional. I think it’s kind of contradicting, but I do get how different designs might call for methods.