For Norman’s piece, I was very surprised to find it very relatable as I initially didn’t quite understand where he was going with his vast knowledge of teapots, but I later realized that he was talking about a feeling I actually had trouble verbalizing a few months ago. I had a conversation with some friends where I wanted to describe how much the visual design of a certain aspect of something I was trying to learn significantly affected how passionate I felt toward learning that ‘something.” While my friends wrote me off as just a little picky with my peripherals, Norman’s point on “aesthetic pleasure” improving perceived usability of something really made me feel validated. For example, just having a pretty bass guitar will make me feel more likely to pick it up to practice it seriously rather than just have it lying around.
The general idea of emotional design was very interesting, and it reminded me of the sound design of my midterm project. The sound design alone was motivating me through countless playtests against myself. It was because I designed the SFX to hit a certain metaphorical chord in my brain that I felt more passionate about the final result. It made me even happier to hear positive feedback on the SFX design from my fellow peers as it was honestly just designed in a way that was personally satisfying to me; other people enjoying it was definitely an unseen externality.
I had previously read about Margaret Hamilton’s story back in 2019 when we had the first visualization of an event horizon/black hole back. One of the parts that resonated with me most was that Hamilton ran to her computer after a late-night party to fix some faulty code she thought about at the party. I think this shows just how much pride Hamilton had in her role on the Apollo missions, and just how brilliant she was. Her quote, “I was always imagining headlines in the newspapers, and they would point back to how it happened, and it would point back to me” shows me a lot of her prideful but grounded nature that I found very inspiring.
