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EDGE903 - Assessment 2 - Reading Response
The article I have chosen to respond to is Emotionally Centered Design by Donald A. Norman published in the journal ‘Interactions’ during 2006.
Norman introduces the reader to the concept of engaging a users emotions and the importance of designing interfaces to produce an emotional impact. He goes on to say that designers are “...moving from behaviourally effective designs to ones that add emotional engagement.” Norman (2006) uses the example of Google Maps to illustrate his point; a simple two dimensional map would give users the information they need, e.g. driving directions, but Google maps emotionally engages the user by enabling them “...examine the entire world in exquisite photographic detail.”
Interactive multimedia developers already know how to create products that are straightforward to operate and comprehend, but how should they create products that engage users’ emotions? How do developers create products that are thrilling, gripping and enchanting? Norman (2006) proposes that some aspects of emotionally engaging interfaces include: “graceful movement, flowing screens, semitransparent overlays, subtle colours.” He goes on to say that all of these components make up emotionally engaging designs, but questions if there is something else, something not as obvious, an X factor, that evokes a users emotions. Norman (2006) concludes by asserting that future research is needed in the significant area of emotionally centred design.
Much of what we do as people is driven by our emotions. Many psychologists argue that it is impossible to act or think without engaging, at least unconsciously, our emotions. Research also suggests that emotion is closely related to user acceptance and satisfaction, may heavily impact purchase intention, and often serves as a chief incentive for spending behaviour. (Agarwal and Meyer, 2009) Developers cannot ignore the importance of evoking an emotional response in their users - to do so would seemingly amount to financial ruin for companies and user flight. These are all imperative factors that heavily influence interactive multimedia developers, and the companies they work for.
Peter et al. (2007) indicated that research in the field of emotionally centred design has gained notable momentum as researchers have worked to understand the intricacies of emotion and its effect on our behaviours. The significant role of affect and emotion for design and in interactions, whether with humans or technology, seems to be accepted within the human-computer interaction community. “ As computing is changing and becoming increasingly social in nature, the role of emotions in computing has become ever more pertinent and commercial.” (Peter et al., 2007)
In recent years, much research in multimedia interaction design has focused on users’ experiences and their emotions while interacting with digital programs, websites and applications. An ongoing commitment by designers to know the users and to capture the wealth of their experience has led to both unique design approaches and design methods. “An increased number of methods have focused on allowing designers to engage in empathic rapport through direct dialogue with their users, i.e. interviews, participatory design, mood boards, or cultural probes.”(Hole and Williams, 2007)
As an educator, therefore by default an interactive media developer, I am in the enviable position of being able to observe my users interacting with my multimedia designs. If my designs are clunky, sluggish or simply present information, students will become disengaged, sneakily try to visit other sites and generally display off task behaviour. If I emotionally engage students, by including video clips, cartoons, polls, interactive quizzes/games and blogging response tasks in my interactive media designs, I commonly see the students on task, animated and keen learners. But this has been a lengthy and ad hoc process I have undertaken - is there a list of suggestions out there could guide me to develop more viscerally centred multimedia?
I am in agreement with Norman (2006) who calls for “...controlled experiments with
valid behavioural and subjective measures...to reveal the secrets...” of emotionally centred design. In the meantime I will join the throng of developers, designing things shimmer, shine, shrink and disappear; all the time bearing in mind that “Emotions are central to culture, creativity and interaction.” (Peter et al., 2007)
Reference List
AGARWAL, A. & MEYER, A. 2009. Beyond usability: evaluating emotional response as an integral part of the user experience. Proceedings of the 27th international conference extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems. Boston, MA, USA: ACM.
HOLE, L. & WILLIAMS, O. M. 2007. The emotion sampling device (ESD). Proceedings of the 21st British HCI Group Annual Conference on People and Computers: HCI...but not as we know it - Volume 2. University of Lancaster, United Kingdom: British Computer Society.
NORMAN, D. A. 2006. Emotionally centered design. interactions, 13, 53-ff.
PETER, C., BEALE, R., CRANE, E. & AXELROD, L. 2007. Emotion in HCI. Proceedings of the 21st British HCI Group Annual Conference on People and Computers: HCI...but not as we know it - Volume 2. University of Lancaster, United Kingdom: British Computer Society.
