Memorized Exam

Emotional Design – Why We Love (Or Hate) Everyday Things

  Emotional Design – Why We Love (Or Hate) Everyday Things is a book written by Donald A. Norman. After reading this book, I could able to judge a thing either I like it or not. Not only that, I also be able to value a thing either is useful or not. In this book, Donald A. Norman tell us that our emotion are very important because we can determine a thing whether it is useful or not through our emotion. 


  Donald A. Norman has using three types of teapots for the beginning. These three types of teapots are unique. There are ‘ coffeepot for masochists ‘, ‘ Nanna teapot ‘ and ‘ tilting pot ‘. Although three types of teapot are different, they still have their own design, including usability, aesthetics and practicality. These teapots also illustrate three different aspects design, there are visceral level, behavioral level and reflective level. These three aspects are interwoven though any design, but it is possible that some designs have not included these aspects. 


   Besides that, emotion also is one of the important aspects in design. Antonio Damasio has study that a person without emotion is unable to choose between alternative, especially when a choice appears equally valid. So, emotion is necessary in our daily life. Through emotion, it can affect our feeling in daily life. Why I say so? This is because when a person has nice emotion in a day, he will feel happy and everything that he did will become smooth compare when he has bad emotion, all the thing that he did cannot done correctly although it is simple task. This can see through ‘Rooster teapot’, created by Michael Graves. This teapot is beautiful but it is difficult to use it. I am sure that many people will not use this teapot after knowing that the risk using this teapot which the water will scald ourselves when pouring. But the owner of this teapot has different opinion. He said that when he woke up in the morning, he will go to the kitchen and make a cup of tea for himself with this teapot. This will make him feel happy and that is important. Yes, this is very important because when he get happiness, his work will become more efficient and the work can done completely although there has risk of scalding when using this pot. He just need be more careful when using it. 


   Emotion can divided become two. One is positive emotion and one more is negative emotion. Positive emotion includes love, attachment and happiness. While negative emotion includes stress, anxiety, fear and anger. Before reading this book, I taught that emotion only have negative side, but after study this book, I realize that I am wrong. A person that has positive emotion is critical to learning, curiosity, and creative thinking. This is because he will feel more relax, without any stress. When relax, his mind can think wider without any obstacle. So in this situation, a person can think more creative compare when he has negative emotion that will always block his mind and make him feel stress. But the question is how a person can get positive emotion? To get a positive emotion is not hard, it is easy, we can telling some jokes, watch comedy film, playing game or eat some candy. Besides that, attractive things also can influence our emotion. This can see when a thing is attractive, it will attract our attention and we will feel happy after look at it. So, what are attractive things, where can we find them? Actually, attractive things are different for every mankind. Every person have different thing that can attract them and make them feel happy, maybe some people thinks a beautiful arts can attract them but some people disagree it, they think other thing will attract them more. Therefore, there are no constant things for value a thing whether it is attractive or not, it is dependent to a person to decide it.


   For a designer, focus and creativity are very important. If without these two aspects, their design will not success. But, the problem is how to get these two aspects? For creativity thinking, designer can get through positive affect such as happy, relax and good mood. This will make them more creative and be able to overlook and cope with minor problem. With creativity idea, a designer able to create some design. But it is not enough if a designer only have creativity, negative affect are also needed. Negative affect included anxious and stress. Based on research, when a person is fail, the most natural respond is that he will try again. Not only that, when a person has force to the end and there are no other solution, a person will become more focus to look out for a solution. So, for the designer, they have put a deadline for their design. This is important, because through deadline, designer will feel anxiety and more focus on the detail. For the result, a design is done completely by combining creativity idea and focusing on detail. 


   There are three level of design is needed in the design. There are visceral design, behavioral design and reflective design. Visceral design is what nature does. Mankind evolved to coexist in the environment of other humans, animal, plants, landscape, weather and other phenomena. As the result, we exquisitely tuned to received powerful emotion signals from the environment that get interpreted automatically at the visceral level. Behavioral design is all about use. It performance is more important compare appearance and rationale. For behavioral design, the product function comes first. Function is important, because without any function, a product is nothing although it has nice look. A product that class a good behavioral design has four components. There are function, understandability, usability and physically feel. Just now we knowing that behavioral design is all about use, then why understandability and physically feel also include in good behavioral design components? There are count in good components because for understandability, when a person buy a product but he cannot use the product correctly because he did know how to use the product and it is hard to understanding it function of the product. This will make the person think the product are useless and will use it again. At the end, this product is category fail cause hard to understand. So, to let others understanding the product, diagram and instruction book of the product are paste on the product to make it easily understanding. While for physically feel, it more easy to explain. If a product is full of thorns and will hurt us easily, would us buy the product? So, physically feel also important in a product. Reflective design is all about culture, message and about meaning of a product of its use. For one, it is about the meaning of things, the personal remembrances something evoke. For another, very different thing, it is about self-image and the message a product sends to others. Whenever we notice that the color of someone’s socks matches the rest of the clothes or whether those clothes are right for the occasion, we are concerned with reflective self-image. 


   In conclusion, there are relation between emotion with design. When we have positive emotion, we will become more creative and this is more important because for a designer, with creativity thinking, they can design a product with creative.

Review of Letters Upon The Aesthetic Education Of Man

Letters Upon The Aesthetic Education Of Man is written by Freidrich Schiller in 1794. In these letters, Freidrich Schiller gives the philosophic basis about doctrine of art and indicates clearly and persuasively his view of the place in beauty in human life. Freidrich Schiller written these letters base on Kantian principles. There have 27 letters that have written by Freidrich Schiller and I have study 5 letters from it, start from letter 1 till letter 5.

In letter 1, Freidrich Schiller had asked permission for doing a researchs upon beauty and art. The reason he want do this research because he keenly sensible of the importance as well as of the charm and dignity of this undertaking. He is doing his research base on Kantian principles. Through Kantian principles, mankind can value a thing from feeling. But this principle has disagree by the philosopher. Why the philosopher disagree The Kantian principles? This is because philosopher value a thing base on analysis, like the chemist, the philosopher finds synthesis only by analysis, or the spontaneous work of nature only through the torture of art. They cannot accepted value a thing from a feeling because there have no any analysis or prove through feeling. This is contrary with their philosopher  principle. So the philosopher disagree the ideas which predominate in the practical part of Kant's system. Mankind should accept Kantian principle, they should follow their feeling to value a thing and not follow the philosopher principle. This is because if mankind follow the philosopher principle, they will value a thing renders truth visible to the understanding conceals it from the feelings, for, unhappily, understanding begins by destroying the object of the inner sense before it can appropriate the object. Therefore to value a thing, we should follow our feeling, cause this feeling is real and we can be honest to ourselves. We do not need any analysis to help us value a thing either beautiful or not.

When the moral world offers matter of so much higher interest, and when the spirit of philosophical inquiry is so stringently challenged by the circumstances of that times to occupy itself with the most perfect of all works of art - the establishment and structure of a true political freedom, philosopher questioned the utility of arts toward the prevailing issues of morality and politics raised in that time. The eye of philosopher as well as of the man of the world are anxiously turned to the theatre of political events, where it is presumed the great destiny of man is to be played out. Since art is abstract and has to leave reality, philosophers think that art not that important for solving issues; rather, they are more concerned of the use if science in solving the issues presented. But, in reality, art is related with political freedom. For art, it is the daughter of freedom, and it requires its prescriptions and rules to be furnished by the necessity of spirits and not by the matter, it has to raise itself bodily above necessity and neediness. Art is less foreign to the needs than to the tastes of our age; nay, that, to arrive at a solution even in the political problem, the road of aesthetics must be pursued, because it is through beauty that we just can arrive at freedom.

Man are different from others creatures. This is because man will grow mature to reach a certain maturity to decide something for themselves. This can see when we are raised from slumber in the senses, we are dependent to others. When we grow up, we will become more mature and we will start recovers our childhood by an artificial process, that, this is not given by our experience, but established by the necessary laws and conditions of our reason. Then we can give ourselves a choice that we could not make it when we are still a child. As a conclusion, a man will dependent before he reaches maturity and learn independent, the same goes to moral freedom. A man should be subjected under moral slavery first before  he reaches maturity to be a man of moral freedom. There are two kinds phenomena of man, one is natural man which represent existence of society and moral man represent ideal of society. There are transition occur from one to another when reason collides with the natural character of man. Reconciliation is required to balance between the duo: to prevent physical society from ceasing for a moment in time, while the moral society is being formed in the idea; in other words, to prevent its existence from being placed in jeopardy, for the sake of the moral dignity of man. Props must be sought for to support society and keep it going while it is made independent of the natural condition from which it is sought to emancipate it. These props are neither natural man nor moral man.

There are two  types of man which were internal man and subjective man. Besides that, man also can oppose to twofold manner, that is savage and barbarian. For man who are savage, they will feeling rule over their principles, look down upon the arts, and acknowledges nature as his despotic ruler, while for the man who barbarian, they let their principle destroy their feeling, laughing nature and be a slave of their senses. These are different with cultivated man which makes friend with nature and honour with friendship. Therefore, totality of character should found in people that can exchange the state of nature of necessity for that of freedom.

After  study these letters, I find out that there are relationships between the beauty of arts and human being. For art, we can follow our feeling to decide either it beautiful or not. We do not need any analysis to determine a thing either it beautiful or not, it our freedom to choose it, no one can force us. While for human being, we can decide thing through choices when we reach maturity level, and when we participate in political problem, the beauty of art is useful although the beauty of art is abstract. But through imagination, we just can realize about the importance that appear in the problem.

In conclusion, aesthetic s and humanity cannot be separated. They are not mutually exclusive but are complementary.