Emotional design
Notes
In chapter 1 of Emotional Design, Donald Norman cites N. Tractinsky’s research, introduces it as showing that “attractive interfaces are more usable,” and then begins explaining his own theory of why that is so.
But when I read the two papers (1997, 2000), they turned out to be about better perceived/apparent usability, rather than “attractive interfaces being more usable.” Actual usability had not improved (shorter task times, fewer errors, etc.); users merely felt that it had.
The conclusion of the 1997 study says only that user acceptance of a system might improve. The 2000 study explicitly says that actual usability made no difference (“the degree of actual usability had no such effect”).
Norman correctly explains in the first paragraph that this is “perceived usability” (“the attractive ones were perceived to be easier to use”), but in the paragraphs that follow, he quietly slides into treating it as an improvement in usability itself.
For chapter 1 to form a logically coherent argument, he should have cited additional research on actual improvements in usability, rather than relying on N. Tractinsky’s research.
In The Design of Everyday Things, Norman also misrepresented James J. Gibson’s concept of affordance, and then caused decades of confusion by saying various strange things in his attempts to correct it (see A story of affordance).