Designing for Emotion Chapter 3 (Personality)

“Personality is the platform for emotion” I had never heard of HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) and thought the concept was very interesting. I agree with the author, I am also not a big fan of the name and I think making a person feel like they are interacting with another person, a computer can seem cold and impersonal which does not work well when designing for emotion.

The sentence “products are people, too” seemed a little odd to me. Thinking of something as a product as something you can interact and relate to is not how you typically think. I do understand that statement as people seeing themselves using or buying the product.

The history of personality in design was interesting and put the idea “products are people, too” into perspective. Thinking about Gutenberg’s printing press as being based off of human hands made me think that about how other products were based off of humans. When he used that press to print bibles that looked like they were handwritten it gave a more personal feel to the product.

I agree that personas help in being aware of a target audience and staying focused on their needs and had not considered that as only a part of the relationship needed to be built with an audience. Developing this persona also takes a lot more time and effort than I would have guessed, and there is so much that goes into creating basically an entire life for an imaginary person. I think it is important to remember that there is no one-size-fits-all solution.