In this chapter, author used an example of three different water bottles to introduce three levels of design. There are cheap water and expensive ones (figure below). People tend to purchase due to different occasions and motives. The plastic bottled water could solve your thirst problem right away, easy to bring with and dispense after use. While the pricy ones bottled with coloured glass could be taken home and used as a vase or a simply memento of the memory. And also, the cost is part of the attraction where the reflective side of the mind says: “if it is this expensive, it must be special.” Each of the three levels of design —— visceral, behavioural and reflective —— plays the part in shaping your experience.
Visceral Design
Visceral design is all about appearance and attractiveness on the surface. Due to the biological characteristics of human, we are largely affected by nature. Naturally, human being as animal, are attracted to bright colour, sweet taste, symmetrical shapes and so forth…
Visceral design is commonly found in advertising, folk art and crafts, and children’s items. Visceral principles are bright, highly saturated primary colours. It is not necessarily great art but it is enjoyable. On the other hand, adult humans like to explore experiences far beyond the basic, biologically wired-in preferences such as prefer bitter taste —— what we called “acquired taste”, all things are viscerally negative but can be reflectively positive.
The best circumstance of a visceral reaction would be “I want it!”, then “what’s this for?”, finally “how much is it?”. Effective visceral design requires the skills of the visual and graphic artist and the industrial engineer. Since the visceral design is all about immediate emotion impact, it has to feel good and/or look good. For the products are only purchased on looks, good visceral design might be the only chance to get the customer. Vice versa, highly rated products may be turned down if they don’t appeal to the aesthetic sense of the potential buyer.
Behavioural Design
Behavioural design is all about use, and is the only design among three designs that necessarily values testing regarding observation, study and rapid prototype on actual users. There are four components of good behavioural design: function, understandability, usability and physical feel. Among all, function comes first and foremost. Task and activities are not well supported by isolated features, they require attention to the sequence of actions to the turn needs. The first step in good behavioural design is to understand just how people will use a product.
There are two ways of develop a product: enhancement and innovation. Enhancement means to take some existing product or service to next level, whereas innovation provides a completely new way of doing something. For innovation, we need someone with a clear version to do it and predicting the popularity is almost impossible before the fact, although it may seem obvious afterwards.
For enhancement, designers need to spot the unarticulated needs of actual users. First, understanding of the product ought to be established, so that people could have the idea what to do when things go wrong. A conceptual model contains the image in the designer’s head (designer’s model) and the one in user’s head (user’s model) is a great aid. A good designer will make sure that the system image of the final design conveys the proper user model. Testing is the only way to find out.
Also, a good designer would thrive for universal design that maintain users happy and comfortable as product could be understandable but still not usable (e.g. musical instrument).
Good behavioural design has to be a fundamental part of the design process from the very start; it cannot be adopted once the product has been completed.
The process of behavioural design begins with understanding the users’ needs, ideally derived by conducting studies of relevant behavioural in homes, schools or wherever the product will actually be used. Then the design team produces quick, rapid prototype to test on prospective users, prototypes that take hours to build and then to test. As the design process continues, it incorporates the information from the tests. By the time the product is finished, it has been thoroughly vetted through usage: final testing is necessary only to catch minor mistakes in implementation. The iterative design process is the heart of effective, user-centric design.
Reflective design
Reflective design is about the beauty under the surface and user’s self-image. For reflective design, the products can be more than the sum of the functions they perform. Their real value can be in fulfilling people’s emotional needs, and one of the most important needs of all is to establish one’s self-image and one’s place in the world.
With the influence of knowledge, learning and culture, objects that are unattractive on the surface can give pleasure.Ugly art can be beautiful. Reflective-level operations often determine a person’s overall impression of a product. Customer relationships play a major role at the reflective level. It is about service, about providing a personal touch and a warm interaction. Once the reflective system fails, then the appeal is apt to collapse as well.
However, when it comes to reflective level and visceral level, the iterative and human-cantered method are not necessarily appropriate.
“Good art is not an optimal point in a multidimensional. Perfectly user-centred design would be disturbing as well, precisely because it would lack that artistry.”
Overall, if you want a successful product, test and revise. If you want a great product, one that can change the world, let it be driven by someone with a clear vision. The latter presents more financial risk, but it is the only path to greatness.
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