Emotional Design: A Study of Being Boring

Dear Donny,
Your book, "Emotional Design", is boring. I struggled through the first six chapters over the course of two weeks, unable to bring myself to really concentrate. I arrived in chapter seven only to find you jabbing at Isaac Asimov's epic and award-winning science fiction writing (of which I have 26 books). Asimov endorsed "The Design of Everyday Things", a previous work of yours that I actually enjoyed. I find it rather low of you to critique his writing style now that he has died. I find that Asimov's works reflect creativity, style, and expansion; in "Emotional Design" you seem to be restating the obvious in loops of examples, striving to make a book out of a few chapter's worth of material. I sincerely hope that when I read "The Design of Future Things" I am not tempted to put it in the toaster as I was with this book.
Sincerely,
Chris


Now that that's cleared up, allow me to explain the book itself. If you ignore the blatant contradictions in his attitude (contrast this with his previous novel) and his examples (robots must not look like people but must look like people), Norman makes some key observations about our emotions and emotional design that we may take for granted. He breaks design into three levels: visceral (it appeals to basic, natural impulses), behavioural (where use and function are key), and reflective (it projects a certain meaning or message). Behavioural is essentially the idea behind his previous book that we read for class. Norman continues by discussing the need for emotional design and its benefits. When people connect with something, then they will excuse some of its shortcomings. When people trust something, they accept it and are faithful to it. When things are designed with people and their emotional responses in mind, everybody wins. He concludes with some ideas about robots and incorporating emotions into them so that they might learn to care about their tasks and have a sense of awareness.



P.S.
Did you even read Asimov's books? At one point you say that "...he never had people and robots working together as a team." That is the exact premise of all three original novels in The Robot Series! Literally, a human and a robot are partners. In other novels, people LOVE robots. I mean LOVE THEM like some creepy Japanese men love them, even! You also say that robots don't work together in his novels. In "The Naked Sun", the entire planet is literally run by robots. And in the latter novels of the Foundation Series, robots are even part of all-encompassing networks of organisms similar to the one mentioned in your book. Seriously, Donny... don't hide facts just to make a point in your book. That's low.