Amusment Parks - Creating great products beyond functions

Let's continue to our last blog's discussion on designing great products why great products start from designs, and to have designs that resonate with our human senses to create emotional connections between the products and us. 

Dan Norman, in his book " The design of everyday things", used an analogy of amusement park being the expert on trigger people's reflective system as well as causing emotional responses. So that people keep coming back to the park to restock these feelings of joy, pleasure and even attachments.

He explained the reason being that the nature of the amusement parks has balanced three levels of the human subconscious and conscious mind activities. With some of the rides trigger challenging emotions such as fear and anxiety, but people also know that they are in a safe environment, seeking the maximum thrill. It also gives people a sense of control. 

Other rides may associate emotions with joy and pleasure. Therefore, it balanced out the positive and negative cognitive responses for people to remember positive feelings towards the amusement parks after all. 

Our human minds need enough events to trigger the reflective system; it is the system that controls the conscious mind. Every even that cause you to consciously think, and the process is where you develop a deep understanding of the events and able to associate emotions with the event. And later on, when you reflect on the event, you remember the feelings in your memories. It is the nostalgic memories that drive us to express opinions towards certain things and make decisions that represent our emotions that associated with that memory. 

Implication for designers

Finding the sweet spot in your product. You want to create the amusement park experience for your potential customers and users. The designs must include enough of events to trigger the unconscious mind to have automatic responses, and a higher level of distress to trigger learned behavioural responses but to keep the overall experience pleasant and enjoyable. Meeting the expectations to hook users to have positive emotions associate with your product. 

For the coming blog, we would discuss in details of the theory base of designing the triggers.