The IC3 Blue Train - A little journal about design, marketing, sales and other matters

The purring entry of emotions into our design yardstick.

For many years, I have focused on usefulness and usability as the two main criteria for designing ‘good’ products and services. My awareness of the importance of the complementarity of these two factors arose when I was heading the corporate marketing, then the European R&D, of Apple’s networking and communications products ***. I used to talk about the virtuous spiral in presentations and speeches. The computing and communications virtuous spiral looks like this:

click to see the pic

Later I added completeness as third factor, to stress the importance of getting all needed parts to set up a system (like a PC) and all functions expected by a reasonable user. That was satisfying my engineer genes. However, at the same time, I was also listening to the sirens singing the virtues of look & feel, elegance and attractiveness. The few Italian nucleotides of my DNA have always reacted enthusiastically to the designs of coachbuilders like Pinin Farina and Bertone . Aesthetics are obviously a critical factor in design.

Then came emotions. Who denies that Intel’s ubiquitous jingle adds a ‘dimension’ to the company’s branding? ‘Look’ at how many ads create emotions through appropriate music (e.g. “Cocktail for Two” in the latest ad for Schweppes). ‘Look’ at how good you feel listening to the nice thud of your new car’s doors, at the nice smell of its leather seats, and at the smooth feeling of its wooden steering wheel.

That’s why feelings became the fifth factor in our design yardstick . That’s also why, with “ Emotional Design ”, his latest book, my ex-Apple colleague, Don Norman , closes the loop. Emotions are the fifth element that every designer has to integrate.

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*** That’s why my cats, above, are called Mac (the tabby boy) and Tosh (his black sister). They were born in 2004, on the 20^th anniversary of Apple’s Macintosh launch.