Norman,“Emotion & Design: Attractive things work better”
Don Norman, famous for outlining principles of user-friendly design, argues that aesthetics play an important role in the functionality of designs, impacting directly not only usability of the product but also user’s emotional response. An attractive object evokes positive emotions simply when looking at it, which further motivates the user to explore and engage. This is explained through the concept of emotional design, which highlights not only the decorative but also functional role of aesthetic in design.
I agree that it is important to think about the way your work looks like from the point of aesthetics – in both physical and digital works, “pretty” things catch user’s attention, which is then carefully navigated to functionality. Going back to the famous manifesto “form follows function”, in the context of Norman’s ideas I agree with it – attractive things do tend to work better, especially when the aesthetic and functionality of the product are intertwined.
Her Code Got Humans on the Moon
Margaret Hamilton is an incredibly important figure in computer science, and I am glad that I have learned about her work back in middle school. She is a motivating example of a person who has managed to combine her work and home duties back when the opportunities for women to enter technical fields were extremely limited.
Hamilton’s approach to error management is intriguing to me, since she highlighted the importance of simulating all experiences before bringing them to life. Planning potential errors in advance is crucial when it comes to such big inventions as Apollo. The example of tracking an accidental error and then resolving it under pressure says a lot about the importance of paying attention to all details and planning everything that can go wrong in advance.
In my projects, I wish to learn to pay more attention to such minor things that can potentially go faulty, especially since we have started working with physical electronic models – the risks are higher here compared to purely digital simulations.