Attractive Things Work Better

I read this article with initial (and a bit of lasting) skepticism. Like Tractinsky I was suspicious of the methodology employed that led to the claim that attractive designs worked better than unattractive designs. Unlike Tractinsky I am left unconvinced, but quite intrigued, by the hypothesis. It is a proven fact in life that most people prefer attractive designs as opposed to unattractive ones. The question is, does the attractiveness of the design add to its functionality? Norman presents a well written argument in favor of the attraciveness function connection. I would have prefered more information on the thouroughness of the experimentation. It is possible that there were other factors that affected the subjects or the evaluators. What is clear is that a designer needs to keep in mind the association of beauty and emotion. Attractiveness reduces stress which then elevates creativity while also lowering frustration leading to solutions and satisfaction. But I question whether a well designed unattractive option work better than an ill designed attractive one? Functionality is a participation between the design itself and the perceptions and attitudes of the user. Emotion can heighten or diminsh the patience and enjoyment the user receives from design interaction. There is a strong connection here but whether it is as definable and scientific as is being asserted is still to be determined.

Quotes from the article that were helpful are as follows:
In the early 1900s, Herbert Read, who wrote numerous books on art and aesthetics stated that "it requires a somewhat mystical theory of aesthetics to find any necessary connection between beauty and function,”

Emotions, we now know, change the way the human mind solves problems – the emotional system changes how the cognitive system operates. So, if aesthetics would change our emotional state, that would explain the mystery.

Science now knows that evolutionarily more advanced animals are more emotional than primitive ones, the human being the most emotional of all. Moreover emotions play a critical role in daily lives, helping assess situations as good or bad, safe or dangerous.

The psychologist Alice Isen and her colleagues have shown that being happy broadens the thought processes and facilitates creative thinking. Isen discovered that when people were asked to solve difficult problems, ones that required unusual “out of the box” thinking, they did much better when they had just been given a small gift – not much of a gift, but enough to make them feel good. … all Isen had to do was ask people to watch a few minutes of a comedy film or receive a small bag of candy.

In other words, happy people are more effective in finding alternative solutions and, as a result, are tolerant of minor difficulties. Herbert Read thought we would need a mystical theory to connect beauty and function. Well, it took one hundred years, but today we have that theory, one based in biology, neuroscience, and psychology, not mysticism.

At the highest evolutionary level of development, the human brain can think about its own operations. This is the home of reflection, of conscious thought, of the learning of new concepts and generalizations of the world. Sure, dogs can learn to do lots of actions, but they can’t think about them and come up with general knowledge in the way a person can.

Most interesting of all is when one level plays off of another, as in the roller coaster. If the roller coaster is so frightening, why is it so popular? There are at least two reasons. First, some people seem to love fear itself: they enjoy the high arousal and increased adrenaline rush that accompanies danger. The second reason comes from the feelings that follow the ride: the pride in conquering fear and of being able to brag about it to others. In both cases, the visceral angst competes with the reflective pleasure – not always successfully, for many people refuse to go on those rides or, having done it once, refuse to do it again. But this adds to the pleasure of those who do go on the ride: their self image is enhanced because they have dared do an action that others fear.

When you are in a state of positive affect, the very opposite actions take place. Now, neurotransmitters broaden the brain processing, the muscles can relax, and the brain attends to the opportunities offered by the positive affect. The broadening means that you are now far less focused, far more likely to be receptive to interruptions, and to attending to any novel idea or event. Positive affect arouses curiosity, engages creativity, and makes the brain into an effective learning organism. With positive affect, you are more likely to see the forest than the trees, to prefer the big picture and not to concentrate upon details. On the other hand, when you are sad or anxious, feeling negative affect, you are more likely to see the trees before the forest, the details before the big picture.

First, someone who is relaxed, happy, in a pleasant mood, is more creative, more able to overlook and cope with minor problems with a device – especially if it’s fun to work with. Recall the reviewer of the Mini Cooper automobile, quoted in the prologue, who recommended that the car’s faults be ignored because it was so much fun. Second, when people are anxious, they are more focused, so where this is likely to be the case, the designer must pay special attention to ensure that all the information required to do the task is continually at hand, readily visible, with clear and unambiguous feedback about the operations that the device is performing. Designers can get away with more if the product is fun and enjoyable.

Once the creative stage is completed, the ideas that have been generated have to be transformed into real products. Now the design team must exert considerable attention to detail. Here, focus is essential. One way to do this is through deadlines just slightly shorter than feel comfortable. Here is the time for the concentrated focus that negative affect produces. This is one reason people often impose artificial deadlines on themselves, and then announce those deadlines to others so as to make them real. Their anxiety helps them get the work done.

How do you design something so that it can change from invoking a positive affect to invoking a negative one? … But as soon as any problem exists, the music should go away and alarms should start to sound. Buzzing, ringing alarms are negative and anxiety producing, so their presence alone might do the trick. Indeed, the problem is not to overdo it: too much anxiety produces a phenomenon known as “tunnel vision”: the people become so focused that may fail to see otherwise obvious alternatives. The dangers of too much focus are well known to people who study accidents. Thus, special design and training is required of people if we want them to perform well under high stress. Basically, because of the extreme focus and tunnel vision induced by high anxiety, the situation has to be designed to minimize the need for creative thought.

Similarly, designers of exit stairways have to block any direct path from the ground floor to those below. Otherwise, people escaping a fire head for the stairs, go to the next floor down, the next, and the next, keeping on until the stairway ends. Unless forced out at the ground floor, they are likely to continue all the way into the basement – and some buildings have several levels of basements – to end up trapped.

The source of this complexity can be found in the three levels of processing. At the visceral level, people are pretty much the same all over the world … The behavioral and reflective levels, however, are very sensitive to experiences, training, and education. Cultural views have huge impact here: what one culture finds appealing, another may not. Indeed, teenage culture seems to dislike things solely because adult culture likes them.
So what is the designer to do? In part, that is the theme of the rest of the book. But the challenges should be thought of as opportunities: designers will never lack for things to do, for new approaches to learn.