Emotional Design (31 page)

Perhaps the most enthusiasm, though, was shown for communication services that enhanced social interaction and a sense of community. People loved their instant messenger tool:

FIGURE EPI.1
The Google logo during the holiday season.

Google playfully transforms its logo during the end-of-the-year holiday season.

Email was seldom remarked upon—in part because it is like water to these technologists, but when it was spoken of, it was a love-hate response:

Household appliances and the personal computer (the pc) seem universally disliked: “Almost every appliance in my house is so ill-designed,” said one. “Almost nothing about the PC is pleasurable,” said another. And, remember, these respondents were technologists, most of them in the computer and internet business.

And, finally, some things were loved despite their faults. Hence, the love of the VW despite what the writer called “that stupid seat-lift-handle thing.” Consider the following respondent's love for his espresso maker even though it was difficult to use (mind you, this response was from an expert on usability design). In fact, the lack of usability had some reflective appeal: “only a true expert, such as me, can use this properly.”

Over all, the responses showed that people can be passionate about their belongings, the services they use, and their experiences in life. Companies that provide extraordinary service reap the benefits: the special personal touch of being at a Four Seasons Hotel and finding on her bed the television guide, opened to the correct page, prompted that respondent to tell all her friends. Some people had bonded to their things: a guitar, their personal web site and the friends they had made through it, the feel of kitchen knives, a special rocking chair.

In my informal study I got at some aspects of our love and hate of things, but missed some of the truly loved items of the sort described by Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton in their study
The Meaning of Things
that I discussed in chapter 2. They discovered such treasured items as a favorite set of chairs, family photographs, house plants, and books. Both of us ignored activities, such as our love or hate of cooking, sports, or class reunions. Both studies point to the development of true passion about particular items and activities in our lives—sometimes love, sometimes hate, but with strong emotional ties.

How can mass-produced objects have personal meaning? Is it even possible? The attributes that make something personal are precisely the sorts of things that cannot be designed ahead of time, especially in mass production. Manufacturers try. Many provide customization services. Many allow special orders and specifications. And many provide a flexible product that, once it has been purchased, can be tuned and tailored by the people who use it.

Numerous manufacturers have tried to overcome the sameness of their product offerings by allowing customers to “customize” them. What this usually means is that the purchaser can choose the color or select from a list of accessories and extra-cost features. Cell phones can be equipped with different faceplates, so you can get one in different colors or designs—or paint it yourself. Some web sites advertise that you can design your own shoes, although, in fact, the only real alternatives you have are some choices among a fixed number of sizes, styles, colors, and materials (e.g., leather or cloth).

It is possible to have clothes made individually. In the past, they were made by tailors and seamstresses who would measure and fit a garment to your particular size and preferences. The result was wellfitting clothes, but the process is extremely slow, labor intensive, and, therefore, expensive. But what if technology were used to allow customization of everything—somewhat like the personal fit that one gets from tailors and seamstresses, but without the delay and cost? The idea is popular. Some believe that manufacturing to order—mass customization—will extend to everything: clothes, computers, automobiles, furniture. All would be manufactured specifically to specification: specify the configuration, wait a few days, and there it is. Several clothes manufacturers are already experimenting with the use of digital cameras to determine a person's measurements, lasers to cut the materials, and then computer-controlled manufacturing of the items. Some computer manufacturers already work this way, assembling products only after they have been ordered, allowing the customer to configure the product according to their desires. This has a benefit to the manufacturer as well: items are only manufactured after they have been purchased, which means that no stockpile of finished products is required, dramatically reducing the cost of inventory. When manufacturing processes are designed for mass-customization, individual orders can be made in hours or days. Of course, this form of customization is limited. You can't design a radically new form of furniture, automobile, or computer this way. All you can do is to select from a fixed set of options.

Are these customizations emotionally compelling? Not really. Yes, clothes might fit better, and the furniture might better suit some needs, but neither guarantees emotional attachment. Things do not become personal because we have selected some alternatives from a catalog of choices. To make something personal means expressing some sense of ownership, of pride. It means to have some individualistic touch.

We make our homes and places of work personal by the choice of items we place in them, how we arrange them, and how they are used. In the office, we arrange desk, table, and chairs, and post photographs, drawings, and cartoons on walls and doors.

Even items we dislike can provide a personal, redeeming touch: for example, a picture or a chair may be special because it is so detested—a legacy, perhaps, of a family member or a gift, and now there is no choice but to smile and keep it. Then, at family reunion after reunion, a family may fondly recall just how some disliked picture or chair once dominated a section of the house. It seems paradoxical, but the sharing of common negative feelings can lead to positive bonding of the participants: yesterday's hated object drives today's loved experience.

Determining a desirable arrangement of belongings is often more a process of evolution than of deliberate planning. We make continual small adjustments. We might move a chair a bit closer to the light and place the books and magazines we are reading near the chair. We bring over a table to hold them. Over time, the furniture and the belongings are adjusted to fit the inhabitants. The arrangement is unique to them and their activities. As activities and inhabitants change, so, too, does the arrangement of the house. Other people coming to live there may not necessarily find it fits their needs—it has become personal, it fits a person or a family—a quality that isn't transferable to others. Stuart Brand, in
How Buildings Learn
, has shown that even buildings change: as different occupants find their needs no longer met, they change the structure to meet their new needs, often changing an otherwise nameless, faceless building into a distinctive structure with personal value and meaning to its current inhabitants.

Objects themselves change. Pots and pans get banged and burned. Things are chipped and broken. But much as we may complain about marks, dents, and stains, they also make the objects personal—ours. Each item is special. Each mark, each burn, each dent, and each repair all contain a story, and it is stories that make things special.

While writing this book, I met with Paul Bradley, studio chief of IDEO, one of the largest industrial design firms in the United States. Bradley wanted to be able to design things that would reflect the experiences of an owner. He was searching for materials that would age gracefully, showing the dents and markings of use, but in a way that was pleasant and that would transform a store-bought, mass-produced item into a personal one, where the markings would add character and charm that was unique to the owner. He showed me a photograph of a pair of blue jeans, faded naturally through use, with a rectangular faded patch in the front pocket where the wearer had always kept his wallet. We discussed the bangs and markings on our own cooking utensils in our homes, and how they added to their appeal. We talked of favorite books made more comforting by the wear and marks of reading, enhanced through marginal notes and highlighting. And he showed me his Handspring Personal Digital Assistant (PDA)—which IDEO had designed—and told how he had deliberately dropped and banged it to see if the scuffs added personal history and charm (they didn't).

The trick is to make objects that degrade gracefully, growing old along with their owners in a personal and pleasurable manner. This kind of personalization carries huge emotional significance, enriching our lives. This is a far cry from the mass customization that allows a consumer to choose one of a fixed set of alternatives, but has little or no real personal relevance, little or no emotional value. Emotional value—now that is a worthy goal of design.

There is a tension between satisfying our needs by purchasing a ready-made object versus making it ourselves. Most of the time we are unable to build the objects we need, for we lack the tools and expertise, to say nothing of the time. But when we buy someone else's object, seldom does it fit our precise requirements. It is impossible to build a mass-produced item that fits every individual precisely.

There are five ways of dealing with this problem:

 

1. Live with it.
Even if relatively inexpensive, mass-produced items are never quite what we need, we benefit from their lower cost.

2. Customize.
Suppose everything was so flexibly designed that it could be modified as needed, wouldn't that solve the problem? The difficulty is that it is far more difficult to make something customizable than you might realize. Look at the modern computer software system, and you will immediately see the problem. My software offers a wide variety of customization options—so many that I can't even find them when I want them. So many that just learning how to customize is itself a daunting task. Moreover, these customizations invariably fail to satisfy. Everything I do is more complex because I must always choose among numerous alternatives. The things I really want to customize—my peculiar typing, spelling, and stylistic habits—can't be customized.

Proper customization does not come by further complicating an already complex system. No, proper customization comes about through combining multiple simple pieces. Invariably, if something is so complex that it requires the addition of multiple “preferences” or customization choices, it is probably too complex to use, too complex to be saved. I don't customize my pen; I do customize how I use it. I don't customize my furniture; I do customize through my choice of which piece to buy in the first place, where I put it, when I use it, and how.

3. Customized mass production.
As I have just discussed, it is possible to have items manufactured to order. Customers get something configured to their tastes, and costs can be lower because there is no need for expensive supplies of unsold items. However, because the range of customization is limited to such things as choice of components, accessories, and color, this customization is far from personalization.