Designing for Emotion: Chapter 3

This week I’ve moved on to Chapter 3 of Designing for Emotion! Just as the previous two weeks, I have a couple questions to answer regarding my experience with this chapter.

1. What is one thing in Chapter 3 that you agree with?

On page 29, when Walter says “Emotional design’s primary goal is to facilitate human-to0human communication,” I never thought about it that way but now I completely agree with it. He goes on to compare making a real connection with someone due to personalities intersecting and the goal of a design project. As you know by now, I’m all about the emotional aspect in design. I agree with the importance of making our designs “not as a facade for interaction, but as people with whom our audience can have an inspired conversation.” How cool is that? I honestly couldn’t agree more!

2. What is one thing in Chapter 3 you disagree with?

Chapter 3 was difficult to find something to disagree with because it mostly discussed history of personality in design and various elements of a design persona. However, something very nit picky I found was the section “Personality map” in the elements on page 35. It says that we can map personalities on an X / Y axis and I just can’t agree with that. I think personalities are much more diverse and complex than X / Y. And when are you mapping someone’s friendliness and unfriendliness against their submissiveness or dominance? When they’re having a tough week and just failed an exam, or when they’re having the best week of their life and just won the lottery? Personalities can vary from week to week, I don’t think that’s something that is set in stone.