What links Donald Norman’s “Emotion and Design” and Robert McMillan’s profile of Margaret Hamilton is that both quietly insist on humanizing it, instead of just dealing with design . Norman’s argument that beautiful design makes people feel more in control is not just about colors or curves. It’s about the psychology of trust. He claims that people “perform better when they feel better,” suggesting that aesthetics aren’t superficial, but functional. I find this somewhat persuasive, but also a little idealistic. There’s truth to it, I do feel calmer using Notion than some clunky university portal, but sometimes “pretty” products mask poor usability. Attractive things may appear to work better, but that illusion can also hide deeper flaws. Still, Norman’s point stands: emotion isn’t a side effect of design rather it’s part of the system itself.
Reading “Her Code Got Humans on the Moon” right after feels like the necessary reality check. Margaret Hamilton’s code didn’t have the luxury of being “attractive,” it just had to not crash on the Moon. Yet what she achieved was, in its own way, a kind of beauty: the beauty of precision, foresight, and calm under cosmic pressure. Her work (from inventing the concept of “software engineering” to preventing the Apollo 11 disaster) captures design stripped to its core: solving human problems with clarity and empathy. I love how she described her philosophy as “preparing for the unexpected.” That’s the emotional intelligence of a designer without ever calling it that
If Norman celebrates how design makes us feel, Hamilton reminds us what design must do: sustain life when it matters. My takeaway is that emotion in design isn’t always about pleasure; sometimes it’s about responsibility. The most beautiful designs are the ones that don’t panic when everything else does.