Don Norman makes some really interesting points. He touches on a lot of things that I find very important. His focus on fun and accessibility really hit home for me. There is a certain pretension that comes with much of art that can really turn people off, me included. Seeing Norman embrace the happiness that can come from design without doing away with functionality is inspiring in a way.
The topics he goes over were by no means Earth-shattering, they are the most basic concepts of human processing. Yet, somehow, once they are put into a design context they feel completely different, almost revelatory. I knew a little bit about these ideas beforehand, but I had never really applied them to design. It's brilliant.
What really took me though was actually the example of the Ping-Pong table. The one with the ripples and the fish. It is the best application of Norman's talk. The idea of a Ping-Pong table, with the loud-ish sounds and highly kinetic nature of the game along with it, juxtaposed with the silence and peace of a koi pond is, on paper, a pretty cool idea. Problem is, that contrast that makes the idea so appealing makes playing Ping-Pong on said table kind of a nightmare. It is the Icarus of Ping-Pong tables. It flew too close to the sun of cleverness; so much so that its more art installation than piece of recreation equipment. That's not fun. It's too high-minded for a game that exists mostly in the basements of divorced dads. Just the name Ping-Pong torpedoes any chance to make it serious and academic. It's like trying to make a flip-flop that is also a comment on Syria.
I really liked this.
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