The Don Norman Video, “Emotional design” indeed challenges us to think “practicality” and also beauty, but also using beauty as practicality to sell. Don Norman states that sometimes products just need to be designed beautiful, but not totally great in practicality, because the beauty of the product is inviting, exciting and makes the experience “fun”. Hence the most important  thing about using a product is really the experience. 

 

In the video Don Norman demonstrates this trend through examples such as the gold plated phillippe Starck juicer, which is beautiful itself, but its not practical as a juicer as the acid corrodes the gold plating. Another example is the Mini Cooper, though its advertised as a car full of faults, people are still gushing it’s sales because the car is “Fun”, the car is rounded, its playful and looks exciting to drive. Don Norman compares this to an experiment to two groups of people, where the first group is to solve a problem without any encouragement or reward and the second group was given candy before they started solving it. The first group got frustrated and never solved it, but the second group were enlightened by candy with a little “happy” and they solved it.

 In summary, the design of a product and how it will sell is like social popularity, the one with the most appeal and personality usually becomes the centre of the crowd. It is also very true that designs with more appeal becomes more inviting to use, but on the other hand, if the product is interesting and appealing, but doesn’t function as well as how it looks then it becomes a disappointment to the user. Therefore, designers all should cater for both sides of the product’s visual aesthetics as well as its operation and handling.