Trent Mick: June 2009

pleasant things work better

I watched Don Norman's TED Talk "3 ways good design makes you happy" last night:

This part of his talk really stuck out for me (transcription errors mine):

I really had the feeling that pleasant things work better and that never made any sense to me, until I finally figured it out. Look:

I'm gonna put a plank on the ground. So imagine I have a plank about 2' wide and 30' long. And I'm going to walk on it. See I can walk on it without looking, and go back and forth, and I can jump up and down. No problem. Now I'm going to put the plank 300' feet in the air... and I'm not going to go near it, thank you. Intense fear paralyzes you. It actually affects the way your brain works.

...

If you're happy, things work better because you're more creative. You get a little problem, you say "Ah, I'll figure it out. No big deal."

tags: activestate, mozilla, personal, ui