Designing for Emotion Chapter 3

Part of our assignment this week was to read the second chapter of Designing for Emotion, the textbook (e-book) we’re using for our PR Publications class.

 

I agree with the idea that personality is only successful when it’s genuine. As the author puts it, “personality can forge relationships with an audience only to the extent that it’s unique and authentic. If it’s used as a gimmick, it can have the opposite effect.”

 

One thing disagree with in the chapter was that the Beetle was designed to be anthropomorphized and became seen as “a car that is a person.” I don’t buy that. I don’t see how a car can be “smiling” (“It’s hard not to return a smile even if it’s coming from an object”…what?) and I don’t think people would ever want to think of a car as person. While I totally understand people feeling like different cars have different personalities, per se, I didn’t agree with the author here.