What I immediately noticed in the readings is how both Don Norman and Robert McMillan challenge how we define functionality; Norman through the psychology of aesthetics, and McMillan through the ingenuity of software engineering. Reading “Emotion and Design: Attractive Things Work Better” made me question something simple yet profound: why do I find certain interfaces or objects “trustworthy”? Norman’s claim that “attractive things work better” stayed with me because it connects emotion to cognition, arguing that beauty is not decoration but an active force in usability. His description of positive affect broadening creative thought resonated with me, especially when I considered my own design projects in other Interactive Media courses I have taken. When a prototype looks cohesive and inviting, I find myself more patient while debugging it; frustration fades faster. Norman’s teapot metaphor illustrates this perfectly, the emotional experience of interacting with a design changes how we perceive its flaws.
In contrast, McMillan’s “Her Code Got Humans on the Moon” celebrates the emotional labor and intellectual rigor behind Margaret Hamilton’s software for Apollo 11. I was surprised by how Hamilton’s story complicates the idea that engineering is purely rational. Her insistence on accounting for human error, writing software that could correct an astronaut’s mistake, echoes Norman’s belief that design must accommodate emotion and imperfection. When Hamilton’s code prevented a lunar crash due to a data overload, it wasn’t just logic at work but empathy, the foresight to design for failure.
Together, these texts made me rethink the separation between “soft” and “hard” skills in design. Emotion and logic, art and code, are not opposites but co-creators of reliability. I’m left wondering: in a future dominated by AI systems, can machines be designed to “care” the way Hamilton’s software did, to anticipate human error with grace?