Digital Young

Maybe you will find this question a little bit stupid. But then, if you start to think about it, it might not appear like that. Objects around us touch us in an emotional way.

Again, Donald A. Norman writes a great book. That he talks about at: http://www.jnd.org/books.html#E&Dbook_notes.

As he puts it, objects are about loving or hating them. We don’t choose an object if we don’t like it. It is the natural way. Things have an emotional design; those that are attractive work better and make sense for us.

Collected things are emotional. Again, Norman gives the example of Carelman’s teapot. It is, by intent, impossible to use. But, do we use the collected things? How does the attachment to objects is constructed?

“I value my teapots not only for their function for brewing tea, but because they are sculptural work. I love standing in front of the window, comparing the contrasting shapes, watching the play of light on the varied surfaces.” (Norman, 2004:4). Yes, we do like objects because of their utility, functionality, but also (or mostly) for their design. Ask a friend or a colleague to tell you what’s his favorite object from his house and he will definitely say that object’s story.

As Norman says, “the story of teapots illustrates several components of product design: usability (or lack thereof), aesthetics, and practicality.” (Norman, 2004:4,5). And continues: “But what many people don’t realize is that there is also a strong emotional component to how products are designed and put to use.” And he argues that exactly this emotional component is the factor for an object’s success than its practical elements. Meaning if you want, the story behind the utility.

And I will finish with another quotation: “…three different aspects of design: visceral, behavioral and reflective. Visceral design concerns itself with appearances (…). Behavioral design has to do with pleasure and the effectiveness of use (…). Finally, reflective design considers the rationalization and intellectualization of a product. Can I tell a story about it?” (Norman, 2004:5).

So, which one are you? What do you like about an object? And why does that particular object, that you liked all your life, starts to annoy you one of a sudden? These are questions that can be asked when thinking about our grandma’s obsession with putting a lot of things in her room or her house, or when I think about our parents’ obsession with putting in the library gewgaws, like this:

And…

Reading Bogdana’s blog (http://bogdanatheplanner.blogspot.com), I saw she recommended a book that I also liked a lot:

I think that, just as Miller’s book, it is this kind of book that just make your day. In the sense that, reading them, you say to yourself: Hmmm, I saw these things [that they describe], but I didn’t think at this perspective! Besides that, they are authors that, in their domain, they really made a point. And, if you are interested in theories that explain the unexplainable, as I think to be the everyday life, well, again, this is the right book for that. Why do I say this? Don’t you think that things that are the most common and familiar to us, those are the most difficult to explain?

So, here is an author from material culture studies, a guy who, again, influenced my way of seeing things. After reading this book, you will pay more attention to objects around you, you’ll start to think that maybe they are more important in your life than you thought. If Time magazine said that this book is provocative, well, than you might trust their opinion better than mine. :-p

So, Norman starts by asking himself (and us) why all these items around us are supposed to make our life better when, in order to use them, we need all sorts of manuals, guides, or key operators? Therefore, Norman starts questioning our use of everyday things and the increasing difficulty of their use. “This book is intended to make you aware of the problems of design and interested in improving things. Many readers have told me that it has changed their lives, making them more sensitive to the problems of life and to the needs of people”, he says (Normal, 1998:v).

He raises the problem of the supposed intelligent objects, objects that are built in order to replace more and more human actions, but they are so intelligent, that they come with big use manuals that actually nobody reads. As a psychologist, Norman explains that his interest started from his incapacity at working the everyday things and if this incapacity is really a technique incompetency or is there something else. How come people today use less and less functions and features of an intelligent object? This is indeed an important question.

Norman calls this a psychopathology of today’s objects and everyday things. Because they get so complicated that people have to put up, as Norman says, with all sorts of frustrations, frustrations that come from the way that human mind works. For instance, “the human mind is exquisitely tailored to make sense of the world.” (Norman, 1998: 2). Everything that escapes from this sense, becomes frustrating and absurd.

Norman thinks that the source of this psychopathology is the bad design. And he gives the example of Carelman’s Coffeepot for Masochists, in Jacques Carelman’s book, Catalogue d’objets introuvables (translated at Humanitas, Catalogul obiectelor de negasit).

A bad design breaks some basic rules: visibility, mapping, relating (a failure to relate the new functions to the similarly named functions that people already know about), appropriate clues, feedback at one’s actions. “These principles constitute a form of psychology – the psychology of how people interact with things” (Norman, 1998:9).

Just think about how you KNOW to use an object just by looking at it; balls are for throwing or bouncing. Simple things should not require explanation. “When simple things need pictures, labels or instructions, the design has failed”. Put yourself some questions about the everyday use of everyday things and think about these aspects of your use of objects. This could be a passionate exercise for better knowing yourself and also the world you live in.

Every day, every weekend, I see people shopping with a fury and passion that sometimes are hard to understand. Studies about consumption are not new; I am not here inventing the wheel. Theorists say we are in a consumerism society. That we all are victims of consumption, that we cannot stand not to have the last of everything.

In Romania, we are now in a moment where purchase increases with every semester, year, at almost every segment of objects. But I do not want to say all sorts of generalities, this is not my purpose. What I want to say is that reading Daniel Miller’s book, A theory of shopping, made me understand better why this act is really repetitive and that something else is hiding behind it, something else besides all sorts of negative things that psychologists, economists etc talk about.

First of all, this is a great book. Not only that it brings a new perspective on things, but also because it is really well written. Even its author is an anthropologist and a teacher at University College of London, this book is easy to read, has a good writing and a great structure of ideas.

Second of all, it puts some questions to all the prejudices that we have when it comes to shopping. If you ask somebody why does he/she think that people buy so much, he/she will start saying that “Oh, today we live in a very bad society that drives us all to buy. We are all driven by a consumerist society into buying. Advertising is bad cause it tries to manipulate us.” And he /she continues with this kind of speech. Now, this speech for me is unusably because it contains only generalities. Secondly, it proves a superficial point of view on something that hides a lot of specific things.

Therefore, Miller puts a first question: Does shopping is an act of today? Well, not really. Shopping comes from a very long history. What did people use to shop, is it so different from today’s items? And the essential and key question: Why do people really shop? Is it just to fulfill a need (and here we enter in economical perspective of consumption, who classifies human needs) ? How does this need appear? If we were to listen to Baudrillard or Bernard Stiegel, both philosophers and essay writers, we would think that advertising makes us, shoppers, obsessive consumers. Well, I really would like to answer those two non-researchers (and this says it all) that shopping is a complex act, from which advertising is just a part.

So, do we shop because we have a need or just because… it is about something else? Starting from a research for a year on a street in North London, Miller makes a passionate description of various ways of how people shop. Everything comes to people. That’s why Miller starts his story describing people, his subjects of research. Let’s just say better, his friends. Why does he do this? Because, you see, what you are influences the way you shop. For instance, if you are a housewife, you would buy mainly things for home and children. That, as regular items to be bought. If you are a mom, then, it is food for the children, for the husband etc. If you are both of them, do you regular buy make-up, perfume and nice clothes? No, not really.

But this is not the only thing that influences your shopping. It is the shopping for the other persons in the house, your family (husband, children etc), but it is also the shopping for you. And here, at this second level, things get interesting. Why? Well, one thing Miller states is that even when we shop for us, we always shop thinking about other persons’ opinion. Meaning that I buy a dress thinking that my husband would like to see me in that kind of dress, because he likes that model better than another one that I liked better. And so on and so on. All these practices of shopping are described in his book. And another very interesting point: do we shop the same things, in the same way when we are alone that when we are with somebody else? Which influence does this somebody else have upon us and upon our final decision?

All this for a theory of shopping, a theory in which I strongly believe, because when I was reading the book, I surprised myself nodding because I found myself in a big number of cases and also I think his way of interpreting things is true, as I found the same thing on my field, regarding cell phone shopping.

“The thoughts that everybody has when purchasing are less profound, they are backed up by a mass of routine shopping that simply repeats previous experiences so these concerns only come to surface in a few instances. In these both cases, your shopping is dominated by your imagination of others, of what they desire of you and their response to you. It is about relationships to those who require something from you. Often, these are relationships of devotion, mainly routine devotion, that may be deep or may be superficial, and are mainly taken for granted, except where the choice becomes a sign that you have shown some concern.” (Miller, 1998: 3).

So, in his essay, Miller tries to make us see shopping as a sacrificial ritual because us, as shoppers, we sacrifice time, space and even our opinions and tastes in order to be liked by others. And of course, we do sacrifice money for that, thrift being a central figure in shopping act.

So, if you want to read something that could make your day more interesting, to give you a different perspective on things that you usually pass by, this is a great study and book for that. I really enjoyed it.