Designing for Emotion, Chapter 3

This week we were asked to read Chapter 3, Personality, of Designing for Emotion. I really enjoyed Walter’s thoughts and examples about this topic. It’s very important to consider personality in public relations and his advice resonates well with many different areas of the profession.

I agree with Walter when he says that emotional design wants to create human-to-human interaction and not human-to-computer communication. This is very important to remember in the public relations industry. Just as Walter (2011) suggests, we should attempt to make the computer recede into the background in order for personalities to “rise to the surface” (p. 29). When people interact with our designs, they should be able to connect and feel that a human touch helped to create an emotional impact. This will be important not just in digital designs on the computer or portable electronics, but also in print designs and other publications that don’t have the physical human-to-human contact level.

One thing I don’t agree with in Chapter 3 is when Walter says that personality clashes can be a good thing. His underlying reasoning is that they will help weed out customers a client wouldn’t want in the end. But I  think personality clashes can be good for another reason. I believe we are seeing a trend towards a generation much more accepting of personalities. Even if we clash with a personality, it doesn’t necessarily mean conflict, sometimes it can create innovation and positive change. I don’t think any customer should be discounted just because they might create problems down the line. If someone doesn’t like a personality the brand promotes, maybe their opinion and voice can help change the personality a bit to encourage growth in other markets and audiences or it can open the brand’s eyes to another way of thinking about a personality. Either way, I wouldn’t agree that “chances are they [the personality-clashing customers] are not the right customer for you” (Walter, 2011, p. 45).