Emotional Design: Why we love (or hate) everyday things

Don Norman -

Emotional Design: Why we love (or hate) everyday things

Published: 2004

Did you ever wonder why cheap wine tastes better in fancy glasses? Why sales of Macintosh computers soared when Apple introduced the colorful iMac? New research on emotion and cognition has shown that attractive things really do work better, as Donald Norman amply demonstrates in this fascinating book, which has garnered acclaim everywhere from Scientific American to The New Yorker.Emotional Design articulates the profound influence of the feelings that objects evoke, from our willingness to spend thousands of dollars on Gucci bags and Rolex watches, to the impact of emotion on the everyday objects of tomorrow.Norman draws on a wealth of examples and the latest scientific insights to present a bold exploration of the objects in our everyday world. Emotional Design will appeal not only to designers and manufacturers but also to managers, psychologists, and general readers who love to think about their stuff.

Buy from Amazon.com  (Paperback and for the Kindle)
Available on Apple's iBooks
Buy from Barnes & Noble (paperback and for the Nook)

Reviews

The book pops with fresh paradigms, applying scientific rigor to our romance with the inanimate. You'll never see housewares the same way again. - Wired Magazine. (January, 2004)

The major challenge ... Norman explains in this well-illustrated survey of the emotional drivers in product design, is that customers' responses vary so greatly. Product designers need to tailor their work carefully in order to push the right buttons with the right consumers. - Harvard Business Review (February, 2004)

EXCERPTS: Three chapters are available for reading as PDF files. These are early drafts and riddled with typos. They have all been fixed in the book, so please don't tell me about errors!) :

Table of Contents