Design & Emotion Blog

ENGAGE national event – February 22, Barcelona

The Spanish ENGAGE national event was hosted by ADI-FAD and took place in their amazing space in a modernised 16th century old convict. If you are interested and can read Spanish, please have a look at this summary by Sergio Sanchez from Usolab.

It was quite a long evening with nine presentations. I think six would have been better, with an extra coffee break 😉 Nevertheless, some interesting speakers were present. ENGAGE national events are of course focused on the theme of designing for emotion, but it always strikes me to see such different concepts/ explanations/ presentations that are related to the main theme. Presentations covered almos artistic examples of objects that would elicit emotions, to real academic approaches to understand and take into account the emotional experiences of product or interface users. What I also noticed is that the focus is often on a usability-type of approach towards understanding emotions. Often, the satisfaction part of usability is already seen as being “emotional”. Nevertheless, satisfaction is merely a result of a positive emotional experience, but it does not create or form emotion.

Also very nice, presented during the cocktail at the end of the event: The ReacTable, an interactive game-like musical instrument. No need to explain. Just click on the image below and have a look at the video.

Mesa para 8 – February 23, Barcelona
The next day I was el invitado at a ‘Table for eight’ (Mesa Para 8 ) organised by UPA Spain. This was a great way to chat with people with shared interests. On my question what the ‘status’ of ‘designing for emotion’ was in Spain, most answered that there was no status to update on. Nevertheless, looking at almost 200 attendents at the ENGAGE event and the enthusiasm and interest of the people who shared my table, I think Spain is definitely a country where there is a rapid growth of interest and knowledge on the subject. I look forward to working together with some of the people I met there!

Inbetween, I found myself enjoying my favourite type of coffee: ‘cortado’, which is like an espresso, but with a bit of warm milk. Nothing can beat the emotional experience of having one of those on a sunny Barcelona terrace.

[tags]ENGAGE, design emotion, emotional design, UPA Spain, Barcelona[/tags]