In prologue of Emotional Design, the author analysed cognitive and affective systems and introduced visceral, behavioural and reflective levels to explain the importance of appearance and aesthetics of a product, and also provided good examples such as teapots and Mini Cooper to add the credibility.
The figure below is a brief recap that demonstrates the relationship between cognitive system, affective system and emotions.
Three levels of Processing: Visceral, Behavioural, and Reflective
The figure above illustrates how three levels interact and work. The visceral level is the start of affective processing, the most animalistic level that is biologically determined and could be controlled (enhanced or inhibited) by both behavioural and reflective levels. The behavioural level is the most human level, where the skilled performer excels because this is a valuable for well-learned routine operations. The behavioural level is not conscious and could be controlled by reflective level, while the reflective level requires consciousness to operate. For example, a skilled piano player could play the piano automatically without thinking but sometimes he may need to listen to themselves to find out where they are. In this way, the reflective level was lost but the behavioural level did just fine. The reflective level is when brains thinks of its own operation and watches over, reflects upon and balance the behavioural level. In short, it distinguishes human beings from other animals.
Three samples for each level: driving roller coaster – visceral level; chopping food with a sharp knife and solid cutting board – behavioural level; contemplating a serious work of art – reflective level.
Focus and creativity: why attractive things work better?
The relationship between good-looking product and its usability is mysterious until emotions are involved. How come people think attractive things work better? Basically, the answer is that people tend to feel more relaxed and satisfied thus broadening their thinking process, they tend to find alternatives quicker and easier when facing difficulties using a product, and then “ta-da”, problem solved! On the contrary, a relatively bad-looking product would cause negative emotions, when the same obstacle appears, negative emotions such as nervous and anxious would lead to tunnel-vision, user tends to focus on the problem itself and neglect the possible alternatives. A vicious loop is fatal for problem solving.
In conclusion, negative emotions help users to fucus whereas positive emotions trigger creativity. Designers could optimize the product by leveraging the right portions of each emotion.
The brain could be prepared
The advantage human has more advanced reflective level so that we can overcome our biological heritage.
“Children do not come into the world with language, but they do come predisposed and ready… But the particular language you learn, and the accent with which you speak it, are determined through experience.”
The brain is prepared to learn language for most people and the learning process just naturally and automatically happens as babies grow up. But once the first language has been learned, it highly influences later language acquisition. This states that reflective level and consciousness are hard to change the unconscious behaviours and biological heritage.
On a separate note: a sound symbolism governs the development of a language.
For designers, we should know the differences among emotions, moods, traits and personality to understand how people’s minds work to design more effectively.
Emotions last relatively short – minutes or hours;
Moods last slightly longer – hours or days;
Traits last even longer – years or even a lifetime;
Personality last the longest– a collection of traits that last a lifetime, operating parameters change for different situations.
These four aspects are interchangeable and differ largely for individuals. The source of this complexity could be found in the three levels of processing. At visceral level, people are pretty much the same all over the world. The behavioural and reflective levels are the sensitive ones to experience, training, education and cultures. Cultural views have huge impact, ranging from ages, regions to so many other dimensions. For instance, teenage culture seems to dislike things simply because adult culture likes them.
In the following notes, how could designers react to this complexity will be addressed. Keeping up to my blogs see how this challenge could be overcame and turned into opportunities.
Comments