I want to give a little theory about aesthetics in design.
I'm using the term theory fairly loosely, bacause there is, really isn't very much
established theory that relates to aesthetics in design but these are some
preliminary thoughts on the subject. This is going to be based in large part
on my book on design, and in particular on chapter seven, which is also called
aesthetics in design. And so, for more detail and for
references, please see chapter seven. I started this module by using the
example of the Tesla Roadster, and argued that the aesthetic response to an
artifact is the immediate involuntary attraction or revulsion.
Based on information that comes in through the sensory system, and it's
usually visual. And I think most people have some kind of
reaction to this image. And I want to use this as motivation to
then talk about some theory, as to what it is that drives that reaction?
What is it about this artifact that drives that reaction?
So I'm going to introduce the theory and then I'm going to come back and we're
going to re-visit this example. I think the best foundation for a theory
of aesthetics and design comes from evolutionary psychology.
It's been said that we live in a modern world, but that we're equipped with a
stone age mind. And, the truth behind that saying is that
most of our cognitive adaptations, that is most of the, the processes that our
brain uses have evolved over a hundred thousand generations or two or three
million years, and haven't changed very much in the modern, in modern times.
And so, since the aesthetic, since the aesthetic
response, is a response that we, we have with our
stone age mind. Then,
it must be based on some adaptations that were developed in our distant,
evolutionary past. And so, I want to give a way to think
about that, which is shown here. This is a figure from the book.
Let's imagine that we're exposed to some artifact.
I've shown here a hammer. And we experience it through some kind of
sensory interface. Let's for the moment just keep it simple
and imagine that's through our eyes. and down here I've shown time and.
Preference, either attraction or revulsion to an object, to an artifact
changes over time. That is, we might start out reasonably
positive on something. As, as time plays out, we might become
more positive. And then, as more time plays out, we
might become more negative. And, in fact, over the very long time
frame. Say, over days or months, we might do
some research on an object. And, and, and develop an even different
preference, or a different response to it.
And. What I'm doing in this theory is defining
the immediate response, that is the response that plays out from something
like half a second to a minute or two as the aesthetic response as a way to
distinguish it from the analytical response that we might develop over time.
I'd also like to argue that. Our aesthetic response, or what we call
our aesthetic response is actually many different cognitive mechanisms that play
out simultaneously. Our brains are massively parallel.
They don't, our brain doesn't process information sequentially using an
algorithm one after another. Instead,
many different cognitive mechanisms process information very rapidly and.
When we have a sense of attraction or revulsion, we're essentially integrating
computations that are happening over lots of different kinds of inputs.
So what I've tried to show here in this diagram is that there's some very basic
sensing that happens when we're exposed to an artifact.
we sense light and motion, and maybe. Ten milliseconds, then we start to notice
color in maybe a hundred milliseconds, and then we can start to notice things
like texture, geons or geometric elements.
And then we start to notice things like taste, smell, temperature, rhythm, gloss,
symmetry, pattern, and so forth. It isn't until minutes or hours later
that we can start to. Our brains start to.
Develop preferences around status or craftsmanship or attraction or other
kinds of attributes of that object. So our aesthetic response is really
formed from these very primitive, very basic computations that our brain does
based on, usually based on vision, based on seeing an object.
And those computations have to be based, if you think about it, they really have
to based in our distant evolutionary past.
Fortunately, there's been some very interesting research that shows what some
of those mechanisms are about and why they contribute to aesthetics in design.
So I'm just going to give a few examples of these.
The first example, is the example of gloss.
This is the Apple iPhone 5 and Apple products, particularly the iPhone, use
gloss quite effectively. And as, as humans we are attracted to
gloss almost universally, especially initially and research that psychologists
have done suggests that our fundamental attraction to gloss in artifacts is based
on the evolutionary advantage that our predecessors had in being able to detect
water, and so, if you can imagine our ancestors on the desert, in the savannah,
2.5 million years ago, those who were able to detect water had a survival and
reproductive advantage over those that were not able to detect water and the,
one of the only objects that is glossy in our evolutionary past is the surface of
water. And so, what's happened in modern times
is that. Largely unintentionally, I think.
We, as designers, have discovered that we can, we could stimulate that same
response in users or consumers by applying gloss to products.
If you, the experiments that have been done on this are really interesting.
So the one that, the notable one I'm thinking about, is one in which
researchers gave children. Toys that were, had two different surface
finishes. A glossy finish and a matte surface.
And babies invariably prefer the glossy toys.
Indeed, they spend almost no time playing with the toys that have a matte finish.
And indeed, the infants are observed licking the glossy toys, which gives some
indication that it really is about water. And that that's pretty fundamental in the
way people respond to objects. All right, so that's gloss.
The second example of an adaptation is what I call the cute adaptation.
This is used widely in design, often quite intentionally.
The Volkswagen new Beetle is an example of playing a cute trick on users.
So if you look at the face of the Beetle, it has forward facing big round eyes.
It has a big smile, and it has rounded features.
Those are the hallmark of cute features. And if you think about it a little bit,
the evolutionary adaptation for cute is quite clear, which is that babies are
cute, the young of the species. Are cute, and there was a clear
evolutionary advantage to humans who were attracted to babies, that is babies that
got attention because of the cute response are ones that survived.
And that the, there's evolutionary pressure to, to like cute, basically.
And, so that trick gets played in making artifacts cute.
And, if you think about it, it's, it's, it's not that flattering to our cognitive
abilities that we can, by making. This 2000 pound or one ton object, that's
made out of steel. By just rounding its features.
Putting some eyes on it and a smile. That we can cause our brains to think its
cute, and to react positively to it. But it's a very deep and, and quite
effective technique that's used in aesthetics to evoke a positive response.
Okay, the third example I want to give is that we often have a response based on
what I'd call our physics computer. Our basic physics computer.
As humans, we developed an ability to make predictions about structures, and
dynamics of objects. And, safety related to perches and
walkways and so forth. So this is an example of,
this is actually an attraction at the south rim of the Grand Canyon in Grand
Canyon National Park in the United States, in Arizona.
This is an attraction called the Sky Walk.
And, tourists are allowed to walk out over the Grand Canyon.
You, you can't see it in this image, but the floor of the Sky Walk is also glass.
So you are essentially walking out over a cliff that is perched maybe 5000 feet
above the floor of the canyon below. Now,
most people, when exposed to this attraction, have an immediate revulsion.
They basically want to turn and run, as opposed to walking out onto that thing.
And that's because, humans developed an ability to make predictions about whether
you walked out on, when you walked out on a tree limb, it
was going to break or not or whether when you stood on a rock, if the rock was
going to fall over and those were very useful in our evolutionary past.
But, when we're exposed to artifacts that trick that physics computer we get an
immediate negative reaction. Now, in this case it's kind of
interesting, because the immediate negative.
Reaction is an aesthetic response but it's superseded by a subsequent
analytical response that says oh, well I'm pretty sure that I'm not the first
person to walk out on that walkway. And that in fact even today, 2000 people
went out on it today and maybe millions over the course of the last few years.
So it's probably quite safe. So, I'll go ahead and do it.
And in fact we get, we get some satisfaction or entertainment
value out of doing something that messes with our physics computer.
Now, you wouldn't normally think of. The physics computer is an aesthetic
component of a product, or an artifact, but I want to use that as an, as an
illustration that, that some of what we lump into
aesthetics, are other kinds of immediate responses of attraction or revulsion
based on our sensory input. And only some of them do we think of
normal, only some of them fall nicely into the category of beauty.
In this case, this one is what I would consider more, as I say, more the physics
computer. Now let me give an example of how that
plays out in a furniture design. This is a desk that I like quite a lot,
designed by Massimo Scagliotti, and it's called the Xeno Desk; and it's an
example, if you look at it. If you look at it for a minute, I, I'ld
be very surprised if you didn't find it. Intriguing and also a little bit strange.
You probably are thinking, wait a second, will that even stand up, and indeed.
When you look at it a little. A little longer you realize that yes, in
fact, the geometry of this desk is such that it is stable, but.
What Scagliotti is doing is deliberately messing with our physics computer in
order to make this an intriguing object. Now if I go back to cute, let me just go
back to cute here for a minute, and say that cute is actually a special case of
making an inanimate object animate. That is, giving it some animal
characteristics; and cute happens to be making it.
Like a little baby, human. But there are other forms of animation,
or creating, getting an object an, animal, imparting an animal-like quality
to an object. So, if you look carefully at this desk,
you probably. Can see a little creature that is walking
in circles. Its feet are pointed on direction on one
side, one direction on the other. And you can imagine a little creature
that had feet that, like the legs of this table, and it would walk in circles.
Now if you think that I'm just making that up, if you look carefully at the leg
of that table, I think you'll notice that Scollati put in essentially a paw.
On the feet of that, of that table. He's, he's, he's playing tricks with us.
And he's making this object not only mess with our physics computer, but he's
imparting it with animate qualities, with animal qualities, through the use of paws
and feet. Which make it a pretty intriguing object
for us as humans. And I think that mostly is playing off of
our evolutionary past in that we got good at detecting creatures, being interested
in creatures. And, and using, and in this case also,
responding to notions of stability and and strength in objects.
All right, now if you believe me that. Evolutionary psychology explains a lot of
what it is that. That builds our responses, our aesthetic
responses, then you may, you may still. Challenge me, around the question of
whether aesthetics can also be culturally determined.
So for instance, this is the hip-pop artist 50 Cent, and.
My teenage sons like 50 Cent, and they're attracted to his apparel and to, for
instance, his bling, which is the glossy stuff hanging around his neck and on his
wrist. I am not.
Now my children and I share a lot of genetic material.
We have the same evolutionary past. How is it possible that my children could
like this and I couldn't? If, in fact, our aesthetic response is
buried deep within our evolutionary past. It should be invariant across the
species. My resolution of that dilemma or that
challenge to the theory, is that indeed. There is a certain pattern here, which is
culturally determined and, or which, which is interpreted in a culturally
determined context. So the pattern here, the aesthetic
pattern here, is that teenagers are attracted to objects that, annoy their
parents, that, that help to separate them from the adults of their tribe or of
their families. And that was probably a very useful
evolutionary attribute in society, that as teens developed and got a little bit
older, they benefited from creating some distance or some separation from the
elders, from the people, the older in their communities.
And so. They, they developed an attraction to any
symbols or artifacts that, that annoyed or were distanced from the adults.
And so, this is a good example of how that plays out in, in the twenty first
century. Obviously 50 Cent, the specific reaction
to 50 Cent is not based on our distant evolutionary past.
But the, the cultural pattern of teens responding in a different way to
something than adults could well be. Based very deeply in our evolutionary
past, and that could be instantiated or interpreted within the context of the
particular objects and artifacts that exist in our society today.
Alright, so that's, those are just some examples of how I think evolutionary
psychology informs aesthetics in design. Let's return now to the Tesla example,
and with our new skills and knowledge, let's deconstruct or analyze this object.
So, if I take for instance, if you look at the notion of animation and cute and
the creatures here, I hope you all see some creatures here.
First of all, this is the opposite of cute.
there is nothing at all cute about this. but there's a lot of animation in this.
That is, this object is imbued, been imbued with a real animal sense.
The animal sense I see when I look at it is, I see eyes that are on the surface of
a very streamlined form. I see a big mouth with some nasty looking
teeth in it I even see a little. Couple little protrusions here and then I
see some gills. What I see here I see either a skate or a
shark and that's the opposite acute that's really the game.
This, the front of this vehicle is playing, is it's really playing off a
very lethal sea creature which imparts the kind of image and association that
Tesla would very much like to have in its, in its early adopters.
The second thing that's going on is clearly gloss.
Gloss is a, is a trick played in, in virtually every automobile design.
Although there are some very interesting new vehicles that have matte finishes,
which I think are used for in getting attention, but as a first order aesthetic
response gloss, tends to work very well, and you see a lot of gloss on
automobiles. The other, you, there's some physics
computer stuff going on here, the way this car is angled, and the way the, the
lower. And the front end is lower than the rear
end, suggests a kind of falling forward. It gives it a certain dynamism related to
motion, at least it does for me, and I think that's part of what's going on with
it. And then, lastly there's even culture
imparted here. If you look at the air scoops here, and
certainly the red color and the badge on the front, that's all evoking Ferrari the
classic Italian Ferrari car and as, as some of you know, the, the
Tesla is indeed based on and, and was produced, this particular Tesla was
manufactured by Lotus cars. And so it's got a little bit of a Lotus
Elise look to it as well. And that is really a cultural element
that's being invoked in this particular design.
It's a throwback or reminder of those cultural icons.
So hopefully you're convinced that, that aesthetics are.
A, a cognitive response that's pretty deeply wired into our brains.
And that's why aesthetics are so effective in attracting people to
objects, and getting people to love objects.
And, the theory of aesthetics is only really just being developed but hopefully
these few ideas of, of gloss cubed, physics computer animation and cultural
symbols are, are a starting place for thinking about what a theory of
aesthetics might be.
