Genre: Information/Explanation

The new me is beauty . ( Laughter ) Yeah , people used to say , you know , Norman's OK , but if you followed what he said , everything would be usable but it would be ugly . Well , I did n't have that in mind , so ... This is neat . Thank you for setting up my display . I mean , it 's just wonderful . And I have n ' t the slightest idea what it does or what it 's good for , but I want it . And that 's my new life . My new life is trying to understand what beauty is about , and pretty , and emotions . The new me is all about making things kind of neat and fun . And so this is a Philippe Starck juicer , produced by Alessi . It 's so much fun I have it in my house , but I have it in the entryway , I do n't use it to make juice . ( Laughter ) In fact , I bought the gold-plated special edition and it comes with a little slip of paper that says , " Do n't use this juicer to make juice . The acid will ruin the gold-plating . " ( Laughter ) So actually , I took a carton of orange juice and I poured it in the glass to take this picture . ( Laughter ) But , beneath it is a wonderful knife . It 's a Global cutting knife made in Japan . First of all , look at the shape , it 's just wonderful to look at . Second of all , it 's really beautiful balanced it holds -- feels well . And third of all , it 's so sharp , it just cuts . It 's a delight to use . And so , it 's got everything , right ? It 's beautiful and it 's functional . And I can tell you stories about it , which makes it reflective , and so you 'll see I have a theory of emotion . And those are the three components . Hiroshi Ishii and his group at the MIT Media Lab took a ping-pong table and a projector above it , and on the ping-pong table they projected an image of water and fish swimming in it . And as you play ping-pong , whenever the ball hits part of the table the ripples spread out and the fish run away . But of course , then the ball hits the other side , ripples hit the -- poor fish , they ca n ' t find any peace and quiet . ( Laughter ) And , is that a good way to play ping-pong ? No. But is it fun ? Yeah ! Yeah . So -- or look at Google . If you type in , oh say , " emotion and design " you get 10 pages of results . So Google just took their logo and they spread it out . Instead of saying " You got 73,000 results . This one through 20 . Next , " they just give you as many O 's as there are pages . It 's really simple and subtle . I bet a lot of you have seen it and never noticed it . That 's the subconscious mind that sort of notices it , it probably is kind of pleasant and you did n't know why . And it 's just clever . And of course , what 's especially good , if you type " design and emotion , " the first response out of those 10 pages is my website . ( Laughter ) Now , the weird thing is Google lies because if I type " design and emotion , " it says , " You do n't need the ' and . ' We do it anyway . " So , OK . So I type " design emotion " and my website was n ' t first again . It was third . Oh well , different story . There was this wonderful review in The New York Times about the MINI Cooper automobile . It said , " You know , this is a car that has lots of faults . Buy it anyway . It 's so much fun to drive . " And if you look at the inside of the car -- I mean , I wanted to see , I rented it , this is me taking a picture while my son is driving -- and the inside of the car , the whole design is fun . It 's round , it 's neat . The controls work wonderfully . So that 's my new life , it 's all about fun . I really have the feeling that pleasant things work better , and that never made any sense to me until I finally figured out , look ... I 'm going to put a plank on the ground . So , imagine I have a plank about two feet wide and 30 feet long and I 'm going to walk on it , and you see I can walk on it without looking , I can go back and forth and I can jump up and down . No problem . Now I 'm going to put the plank 300 feet in the air and I 'm not going to go near it , thank you . Intense fear paralyzes you . It actually affects the way the brain works . So , Paul Saffo , just before his talk said that he did n't really have it down until just a few days or hours before the talk , and that anxiety was really helpful in causing him to focus And that 's what fear and anxiety does It causes you to be -- what 's called depth-first processing -- to focus , not be distracted , and I could n ' t force myself across that . Now some people can -- circus workers , steel workers . But it really changes the way you think . And then , a psychologist , Alice Isen , did this wonderful experiment . She brought students in to solve problems So , she 'd bring people into the room , there 'd be a string hanging down here and a string hanging down here and an empty room , except a table with a bunch of crap on it -- some papers and scissors and stuff . And she 'd bring them in , and she 'd say , " This is an IQ test and it determines how well you do in life . Would you tie those two strings together ? " So they 'd take one string and they 'd pull it over here and they could n ' t reach the other string . Still ca n ' t reach it . And , basically none of them could solve it . You bring in a second group of people , and you say , " Oh , before we start , I got this box of candy , and I do n't eat candy . Would you like the box of candy ? " And turns out they liked it , and it made them happy , not very happy , but a little bit of happy . And guess what -- they solved the problem . And it turns out that when you 're anxious you squirt neural transmitters in the brain , which focuses you makes you depth-first , And when you 're happy -- what we call positive valence -- you squirt dopamine into the prefrontal lobes , which makes you a breadth-first problem solver you 're more susceptible to interruption , you do out of the box thinking . That 's what brainstorming 's about , right ? With brainstorming we make you happy , we play games , and we say , " No criticism , " and you get all these weird , neat ideas . But in fact , if that 's how you always were you 'd never get any work done because you 'd be working along and say , " Oh , I got a new way of doing it . " So to get work done , you 've got to set a deadline , right ? You 've got be anxious . So the brain works differently and if you 're happy , things work better because you 're more creative You get a little problem , you say , " Ah , I 'll figure it out . " No big deal . There 's something I call the visceral level of processing . Biology -- we have co-adapted through biology to like bright colors . That 's especially good that mammals and primates like fruits and bright plants , because you eat the fruit and you thereby spread the seed . There 's an amazing amount of stuff that 's built into the brain . We dislike bitter tastes , we dislike loud sounds , we dislike hot temperatures , cold temperatures . We dislike scolding voices , we dislike frowning faces , We like symmetrical faces , et cetera , et cetera . So that 's the visceral level and in design you can express visceral in lots of ways , like the choice of type fonts and the red for hot , exciting . Or the 1963 Jaguar . It 's actually a crummy car , falls apart all the time , but the owners love it . And it 's beautiful -- it 's in the Museum of Modern Art . A water bottle . You buy it because of the bottle , not because of the water . And when people are finished , they do n't throw it away they keep it for -- you know , it 's like the old wine bottles , you keep it for decoration or maybe fill it with water again , which proves it 's not the water . It 's all about the visceral experience . The middle level of processing is the behavioral level and that 's actually where most of our stuff gets done . Visceral is subconscious , you 're unaware of it Behavioral is subconscious , you 're unaware of it . Almost everything we do is subconscious . I 'm walking around the stage , I 'm not attending to the control of my legs . I 'm doing a lot , most of my talk is subconscious , it 's been rehearsed and thought about a lot . Most of what we do is subconscious . Automatic behavior -- skilled behavior is subconscious , controlled by the behavioral side . And behavioral design is all about feeling in control , which includes usability , understanding , but also the feel and heft . That 's why the Global knives are so neat . They 're so nicely balanced , so sharp , you really feel you 're in control of the cutting . Or just driving a high-performance sports car over a demanding curb , again feeling that you are in complete control of the environment . Or the sensual feeling . This is a Kohler shower , a waterfall shower , and actually , all those knobs beneath are also shower heads . It will squirt you all around And you can stay in that shower for hours . And not waste water , by the way , it recirculates the same dirty water . ( Laughter ) Or this -- this is a really neat teapot I found at high tea at The Four Seasons Hotel in Chicago . It 's a Ronnefeldt tilting teapot . That 's kind of what the teapot looks like but the way you use it is you lay it on its back , and you put tea in , and then you fill it with water because water then seeps over the tea . And the tea is sitting in this stuff to the right -- the tea is to the right of this line . There 's a little ledge inside , so the tea is sitting there and the water is filling it up like that . And when the tea is ready , or almost ready , you tilt it . And that means the tea is partially covered while it completes the brewing . And when it 's finished , you put it vertically , and now the tea is -- you remember -- above this line and the water only comes to here and so it keeps the tea out And on top of that , it communicates , which is what emotion does . Emotion is all about acting , emotion is really about acting . It 's being safe in the world . Cognition is about understanding the world , emotion is about interpreting it saying good , bad , safe , dangerous , and getting us ready to act , which is why the muscles tense or relax . And that 's why we can tell the emotion of somebody else , because their muscles are acting , subconsciously , except that we 've evolved to make the facial muscles really rich with emotion . Well , this has emotions if you like , because it signals the waiter that , " Hey , I 'm finished . See -- upright . " And the waiter can come by and say , " Would you like more water ? " It 's kind of neat . What a wonderful design . And the third level is reflective , which is , if you like the superego , it 's a little part of the brain that has no control over what you do , no control over the -- does n ' t see the senses , does n ' t control the muscles . It looks over what 's going on . It 's that little voice in your head . that 's watching and saying , " That 's good . That 's bad . " or " Why are you doing that ? I do n't understand . " It 's that little voice in your head that 's the seat of consciousness . Here 's a great reflective product . Owners of the Hummer have said , " You know I 've owned many cars in my life all sorts of exotic cars , but never have I had a car that attracted so much attention . " It 's about their image , it 's not about the car . But even if you want a more positive model , this is the GM car . And the reason you might buy it now is because you care about the environment And you 'll buy it to protect the environment , even though the first few cars are going to be really expensive and not perfected . But that 's reflective design as well . Or an expensive watch so you can impress people , who say " Oh gee , I did n't know you had that watch . " As opposed to this one , which is a pure behavioral watch , which probably keeps better time than the 13,000 dollar watch I just showed you . But it 's ugly . This is a clear Don Norman watch . And what 's neat is sometimes you pit one emotion against the other , the visceral fear of falling against the reflective state saying " It 's OK . It 's OK . It 's safe . It 's safe . " If that amusement park were rusty and falling apart , you 'd never go on the ride . So , it 's pitting one against the other . The other neat thing ( Laughter ) So Jake Cress is this furniture maker , and he makes this unbelievable set of furniture . And this is his chair with claw , and the poor little chair has lost its ball and it 's trying to get it back before anybody notices . And what 's so neat about it is how you accept that story . And that 's what 's nice about emotion . So that 's the new me . I 'm only saying positive things from now on . ( Laughter ) ( Applause ) </content