Designers+and+Users

=Designers and Users=

We take as our starting point the distinction between two perspectives on products: designer and users. There is often a mismatch between these two perspectives, but both matches and mismatches constitute a major source of the affective reactions that people have to products and their interactions with them. These reactions extend over a wide range and include not only relatively short - term emotions, but also longer - term reactions such as moods, preferences, and attitudes.

The first perspective is that of the designer. The designer works in a space that is constrained by a number of different considerations that, depending on the context, include such things as functionality, physical limitations, appearance, cost, time - to - market, characteristics of market segments, appearance, cost, time - to - market, characteristics of market segments, and legacy and brand - identity issues. We focus on two of these in particular - functionality and appearance. We do this not because we think that other considerations are unimportant, but because these teo are the most relevant for understanding the relation between emotion and design.

The second perspective is that of the user, and here too, functionality and appearance are important, but for different reasons and in different ways. Specifically, from the perspective of the user, these two aspects of the design space are the principal sources of affective reactions. We focus on three particular kinds of users' emotional reactions to products - reactions that might ot might not have been anticipated or intended by the designer.These three kinds relate as Visceral (perceptually bases), Behavioral (expectation based), and Reflective (intelectually based) aspects of design. The figure shows the relation between the two view.



Differences between designer and user perspectives of the same product are particularly evident with respect to the role of emotions. The designer may intend to induce emotions through the design, but because emotions reside in the user of the product rather than in the product itself, the emotions the user experiences are not necessarily the same as those intended by the designer. Certainly, some of the emotions the user might experience might have been intended by the designer, but some might not. And indeed some might be just the opposite of those intended by the designer. Product - induced emotions are often quite idiosyncratic, depending, for example on memories the product evokes or on the particular circumstances of use. Yet other emotions result from concerns outside the object, such as the status it might or might not bestow.

Designers have more control over users' Visceral and Behavioral reaction than over Reflective ones, but even here the control is indirect at best. Indeed we characterize the attempts of designers to influence these reactions as attempts to provide emotional affordances. In other words, designers can do things that provide opportunities for the experience of emotions in users, just as, by building in physical affordances, they can influence the way in which an object is likely to be manipulated and controlled. But whether affordances are actually made use of is beyond the designer's control.

=Reference and Other Link= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_interface_engineering

http://www.stcsig.org/usability/topics/articles/ucd%20_web_devel.html

http://www.digital-web.com/articles/designer_user_partnership/

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/114xc3e5.aspx