- “Visceral design concerns itself with appearances. Here is where the Nanna teapot excels—I so enjoy its appearance, especially when filled with the amber hues of tea, lit from beneath by the flame of its warming candle. Behavioral design has to do with the pleasure and effectiveness of use. Here both the tilting teapot and my little metal ball are winners. Finally, reflective design considers the rationalization and intellectualization of a product. Can I tell a story about it? Does it appeal to my self-image, to my pride?”
- “A major theme of this book is that much of human behavior is subconscious, beneath conscious awareness. Consciousness comes late, both in evolution and also in the way the brain processes information; many judgments have already been determined before they reach consciousness. Both affect and cognition are information-processing systems, but they have different functions. The affective system makes judgments and quickly helps you determine which things in the environment are dangerous or safe, good or bad. The cognitive system interprets and makes sense of the world. Affect is the general term for the judgmental system, whether conscious or subconscious. Emotion is the conscious experience of affect, complete with attribution of its cause and identification of its object.”
- “cognition interprets and understands the world around you, while emotions allow you to make quick decisions about it. Usually, you react emotionally to a situation before you assess it cognitively, since survival is more important than understanding. But sometimes cognition comes first. One of the powers of the human mind is its ability to dream, to imagine, and to plan for the future. In this creative soaring of the mind, thought and cognition unleash emotion, and are in turn changed themselves.”
- “let’s look at some examples of these three levels in action: riding a roller coaster; chopping and dicing food with a sharp, balanced knife and a solid cutting board; and contemplating a serious work of literature or art. These three activities impact us in different ways. The first is the most primitive, the visceral reaction to falling, excessive speed, and heights. The second, the pleasure of using a good tool effectively, refers to the feelings accompanying skilled accomplishment, and derives from the behavioral level. This is the pleasure any expert feels when doing something well, such as driving a difficult course or playing a complex piece of music.This behavioral pleasure, in turn, is different from that provided by serious literature or art, whose enjoyment derives from the reflective level, and requires study and interpretation.”
- “Emotions, moods, traits, and personality are all aspects of the different ways in which people’s minds work, especially along the affective, emotional domain. Emotions change behavior over a relatively short term, for they are responsive to the immediate events. Emotions last for relatively short periods—minutes or hours. Moods are longer lasting, measured perhaps in hours or days. Traits are very long-lasting, years or even a lifetime. And personality is the particular collection of traits of a person that last a lifetime. But all of these are changeable as well. We all have multiple personalities, emphasizing some traits when with families, a different set when with friends. We all change our operating parameters to be appropriate for the situation we are in.”
- “Ever watch a movie with great enjoyment, then watch it a second time and wonder what on earth you saw in it the first time? The same phenomenon occurs in almost all aspects of life, whether in interactions with people, in a sport, a book, or even a walk in the woods. This phenomenon can bedevil the designer who wants to know how to design something that will appeal to everyone: One person’s acceptance is another one’s rejection. Worse, what is appealing at one moment may not be at another. The source of this complexity can be found in the three levels of processing. At the visceral level, people are pretty much the same all over the world. Yes, individuals vary, so although almost everyone is born with a fear of heights, this fear is so extreme in some people that they cannot function normally—they have acrophobia. Yet others have only mild fear, and they can overcome it sufficiently to do rock climbing, circus acts, or other jobs that have them working high in the air. The behavioral and reflective levels, however, are very sensitive to experiences, training, and education. Cultural views have huge impact here: what one culture finds appealing, another may not. Indeed, teenage culture seems to dislike things solely because adult culture likes them. So what is the designer to do?”
- “The design requirements for each level differ widely. The visceral level is pre-consciousness, pre-thought. This is where appearance matters and first impressions are formed. Visceral design is about the initial impact of a product, about its appearance, touch, and feel. The behavioral level is about use, about experience with a product. But experience itself has many facets: function, performance, and usability. A product’s function specifies what activities it supports, what it is meant to do—if the functions are inadequate or of no interest, the product is of little value. Performance is about how well the product does those desired functions—if the performance is inadequate, the product fails. Usability describes the ease with which the user of the product can understand how it works and how to get it to perform. Confuse or frustrate the person who is using the product and negative emotions result. But if the product does what is needed, if it is fun to use and easy to satisfy goals with it, then the result is warm, positive affect. It is only at the reflective level that consciousness and the highest levels of feeling, emotions, and cognition reside. It is only here that the full impact of both thought and emotions are experienced. At the lower visceral and behavioral levels, there is only affect, but without interpretation or consciousness. Interpretation, understanding, and reasoning come from the reflective level. Of the three levels, the reflective one is the most vulnerable to variability through culture, experience, education, and individual differences. This level can also override the others. Hence, one appealing. Sophistication often brings with it a peculiar disdain for popular appeal, where the very aspects of a design that make it appeal to many people distress some intellectuals. There is one other distinction among the levels: time. The visceral and behavioral levels are about “now,” your feelings and experiences while actually seeing or using the product. But the reflective level extends much longer—through reflection you remember the past and contemplate the future. Reflective design, therefore, is about long-term relations, about the feelings of satisfaction produced by owning, displaying, and using a product. A person’s self-identity is located within the reflective level, and here is where the interaction between the product and your identity is important as demonstrated in pride (or shame) of ownership or use. Customer interaction and service matter at this level.
The ways in which the three levels interact are complex. Still, for purposes of application, it is possible to make some very useful simplifications. So, although the scientist in me protests that what I am about to say is far too simple, the practical, engineering, designer side of me says that the simplification is good enough, and, more important, useful. The three levels can be mapped to product characteristics like this: Visceral design > Appearance, Behavioral design > The pleasure, and effectiveness of use Reflective design > Self-image, personal satisfaction, memories Even these simplifications are difficult to apply. Should some products be primarily visceral in appeal, others behavioral, others reflective? How does one trade off the requirements at one level against those of the others? How do visceral pleasures translate into products? Won’t the same things that excite one group of people dismay others? Similarly, for the reflective level, wouldn’t a deep reflective component be attractive to some and bore or repel others? The answer is, of course, that no single product can hope to satisfy everyone. The designer must know the audience for whom the product is intended. Although I have described the three levels separately, any real experience involves all three: a single level is rare in practice, and if it exists at all is most likely to come from the reflective level than from the behavioral or the visceral.
Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola manage worldwide success, in part capitalizing on a universal liking for sweet beverages, in part through sophisticated, culture-specific advertising. Personal computers are successful throughout the world because their benefits overcome their (numerous) deficiencies, and because there really is no choice. But most products have to be sensitive to the differences among people.” - “Special objects turned out to be those with special memories or associations, those that helped evoke a special feeling in their owners. Special items all evoked stories. Seldom was the focus upon the item itself: what mattered was the story, an occasion recalled. Thus, one woman interviewed by Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton pointed to her living-room chairs and said: “They are the first two chairs me and my husband ever bought, and we sit in them and I just associate them with my home and having babies and sitting in the chairs with babies.” We become attached to things if they have a significant personal association, if they bring to mind pleasant, comforting moments. Perhaps more significant, however, is our attachment to places: favorite corners of our homes, favorite locations, favorite views. Our attachment is really not to the thing, it is to the relationship, to the meanings and feelings the thing represents.”
- “In psychology, the study of the self has become a big industry, with books, societies, journals, and conferences. But “self ” is a complex concept: It is culturally specific. Thus, Eastern and Western notions of self vary considerably, with the West placing more emphasis on the individual, the East on the group. Americans tend to want to excel as individuals, whereas Japanese wish to be good members of their groups and for others to be satisfied with their contributions. But even these characterizations are too broad and oversimplified. In fact, on the whole, people behave very similarly, given the same situation. It is culture that presents us with different situations. Thus, Asian cultures are more likely to establish a sharing, group attitude than are the cultures of Europe and the Americas, where individualistic situations are more common. But put Asians in an individualistic situation and Europeans or Americans in a social, sharing situation, and their behaviors are remarkably similar. “
- “In the long run, simple style with quality construction and effective performance still wins. So a business that manufactures office machines, or basic home appliances, or web sites for shipping, commerce, or information, would be wise to stick to the fundamentals.
There is a set of products, however, whose goals are entertainment, or style, or perhaps enhancement of a person’s image. Here is where fashion comes into play. Here is where the huge individual differences in people and cultures are important.” - “Attractive things do work better—their attractiveness produces positive emotions, causing mental processes to be more creative, more tolerant of minor difficulties. The three levels of processing lead to three corresponding forms of design: visceral, behavioral, and reflective. Each plays a critical role in human behavior, each an equally critical role in the design, marketing, and use of products.”
- “Behavioral design: what matters here is function, understandability, usability, and physical feel. On the face of it, getting the function right would seem like the easiest of the criteria to meet, but in fact, it is tricky. People’s needs are not as obvious as might be thought. When a product category already exists, it is possible to watch people using the existing products to learn what improvements can be made. But what if the category does not even exist? How do you discover a need that nobody yet knows about? This is where the product breakthroughs come from.”
- “There are two kinds of product development: enhancement and innovation. Innovations are particularly difficult to assess. Before they were introduced, who would have thought we needed typewriters, personal computers, copying machines, or cell phones? Answer: Nobody. when individuals first purchased cell phones, they often explained that they didn’t intend to use them, but that they were “in case I have an emergency.” Predicting the popularity of a new product is almost impossible before the fact, even though it may seem obvious afterward.”
- “Enhancements to a product come primarily by watching how people use what exists today, discovering difficulties, and then overcoming them.”
- “Because most people are unaware of their true needs, discovering them requires careful observations in their natural environment. The trained observer can often spot difficulties and solutions that even the person experiencing them does not consciously recognize. But once an issue has been pointed out, it is easy to tell when you have hit the target.”
- “After function comes understanding. If you can’t understand a product, you can’t use it—at least not very well. With a good understanding, once an operation is explained, you are apt to say, “Oh, yes, I see,” and from then on require no further explanation or reminding. “Learn once, remember forever,””
- “there are three different mental images of any object. First is the image in the head of the designer—call that the “designer’s model.” Then the image that the person using the device has of it and the way it works: call this the “user’s model.” In an ideal world, the designer’s model and the user’s model should be identical and, as a result, the user understands and uses the item properly.”
- “The only way to find this out is through testing: develop early prototypes, then watch as people try to use them. What is something with a good system image? Almost any design that makes apparent its operation. The rulers and margin setting in the word processor I use as I type this is one excellent example.”
- “For someone to use a product successfully, they must have the same mental model (the user’s model) as that of the designer (the designer’s model). But the designer only talks to the user via the product itself, so the entire communication must take place through the “system image”: the information conveyed by the physical product itself.”
- “Focus groups, questionnaires, and surveys are poor tools for learning about behavior, for they are divorced from actual use. Most behavior is subconscious and what people actually do can be quite different from what they think they do. We humans like to think that we know why we act as we do, but we don’t, however much we like to explain our actions. The fact that both visceral and behavioral reactions are subconscious makes us unaware of our true reactions and their causes. This is why trained professionals who observe real use in real situations can often tell more about people’s likes and dislikes—and the reasons for them—than the people themselves.”
- “I learned that products can be more than the sum of the functions they perform. Their real value can be in fulfilling people’s emotional needs, and one of the most important needs of all is to establish one’s self-image and one’s place in the world.”
- “Amusement park rides are a good example of the interplay between reflection and reaction. The ride appeals both to those who value the feelings that accompany high arousal and fear for its own sake and to those for whom the ride is all about the reflective power afterward. At the visceral level, the whole point is to thrill riders, scaring them in the process. But this has to be done in a reassuring way. While the visceral system is operating at full force, the reflective system is a calming influence. This is a safe ride, it is telling the rest of the body. It only appears to be dangerous. It is okay. During the ride, the visceral system probably wins. But in retrospect, when memory has dimmed, the reflective system wins. Now, it is a badge of honor to have experienced the ride. It provides stories to tell other people. Here an effective amusement park enhances the interaction by selling photographs of the rider at the peak of the experience. They sell photographs and souvenirs, so the riders can brag to friends.”
- “Some robots will take care of children by playing with them, reading to them, singing songs. Educational toys are already doing this, and the sophisticated robot could act as a powerful tutor, starting with the alphabet, reading, and arithmetic, but soon expanding to almost any topic. Neal Stephenson’s science fiction novel, The Diamond Age, does a superb job of showing how an interactive book, The Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer, can take over the entire education of young girls from age four through adulthood.”
Tarek Naim's Blog 
This is a very intuitive talk ..
And those three levels of processing that have relevance in design and market , also are applicable in many other domains.
Makes me think : what are products or things that meet the criteria of satisfaction in the three levels ( viseral, behavioural, reflective )????
also
Can certain people be categorised that way too ?? Not just products!!??
Some people meet viseral , behaviour needs , but not reflective component! !!
Some individuals look stunning , ( pleasure on the viseral component )
But then are so Empty, so they just don’t fill up the mind ( lack of reflective process there!)
Some are the opposite !!
Or for example
Great Behaviour process ( so the behaviour level), may apply to a certain Maid , or house keeper ..
Some are just so user friendly , arrive when needed and get the job done right , spot on!!
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Interesting parallel that you draw between products and people being thought of on the three dimensions.
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A very simple example of a product :
A mug
One mug , it’s just a mug !!!!
But that mug is not like any mug !!
It is a beatifully hand panted and pleasurable to drink as the pottery finish is so smooth , it just glides against the lip press!!! ( viseral element met )
It’s so light in weight , yet break resistant ( behaviour element met )
Its the mug I drank tea from with the sight of my mother or a best friend !! It just brings back good memories! ! ( reflective component met )
It’s the ultimate Mug !!😀
It’s the special made in England Mug!!
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