Seventh Law - Emotion
The seventh law is EMOTION – More emotions are better than less. This law seems to be conflict with the first law (REDUCE) since not everyone agrees with the simplicity of iPods. Adding something extra that are more personal would add more feeling or sense of style to the simplicity. Maeda goes on to give a principle to help you verify the appropriate level of “more”: the principle of “feel, and feel for.” Define your current emotional state and then use that as a point of reference to empathize with your environment. As form follows function, feeling follows form. We add emoticons to email messages, adorn simple iPods and PDAs with cumbersome cases – all in an effort to add an element of self-expression (warmth, emotion) to function.
Maeda goes onto consider our attraction for emotional technologies such as Sony’s robotic pet dog, Tamagotchi, NeoPets, etc. He ultimately touches on how modernism and animism inform and express design, and how different Japanese characters are used to describe the affection one can have for the essence of an artifact. I found that most people tend to fall in love with characters on movie or TV since we might have similarity that we can relate to them or there might be some elements that attract us. We tends believe in the imaginative world which I refer to the art and design here. “While great art makes you wonder, great design makes things clear” – the goal should be to augment the relatively simple achievement of clarity with the more difficult emotional achievement of meaning.
-mei-
3 years ago