Permission Hunting
I spent much of the day filing and following up on permissions requests. I spoke to a very nice woman named Florence at Penguin who assured me that my requests were probably within the realm of fair use, but if I could fax the original pages in, she would get them verified by the permissions people.
I also spent nearly an hour attempting to track down the proper publisher for a quote from Don Norman; ultimately, I sent a message directly to him and, after a brief email exchange, he personally granted me permission to use the specific quote from Emotional Design. In hindsight, this obvious technique seems like the best bet for future projects - contact the author directly, and avoid the strange layered system of publishers and publishing companies.
The quote from Norman, and my surrounding text, deals with the connections between storytelling, narrative and design. I'm specifically interested in the types of interactions that resonate in a larger and more substantial manner:
One way of examining and considering this level of substance is through a linguistic lens of poetry. An interaction occurs in the conceptual space between a person and an object. It is at once physical, cognitive and social. A poetic interaction is one that resonates immediately but yet continues to inform later – it is one that causes reflection, and one that relies heavily on a state of emotional awareness. Additionally, a poetic interaction is one that is nearly always subtle, yet mindful.Consider the poetic and highly refined act of chopping a clove of garlic with a Wüsthof cook’s knife – and compare it to the obvious, jarring experience of riding a roller coaster through the most perilous curves. The roller coaster drops and turns, and relies on the adrenalin rush associated with near death. It creates an experience so riddled with awe that many will stop “thinking” at all. Each turn and drop is bigger than the last, and as riders feel the wind in their hair and the blood in their ears, the exhilaration is one that is sensory and perceptual first and cognitive second, if ever.
By comparison, preparing a meal can be a rather banal experience. Imagine using the heavy forged steel Wüsthof, the cold metal against your hand, the staccato and constant motion of the blade against the cutting board and the pungent odor of garlic pressing against your eyes and nose. This mundane experience described is a story, which creates, much like a compelling novel, a world for the participant to engage in. Unlike a novel, however, the participant is not an idle observer. The active engagement of the senses encourages a highly heightened sense of awareness - the “user” is not simply a “viewer.”
The roller-coaster forces a set of behavior through brute force, and reminds the rider over and over that they are, in fact, thrilled. The knife, by comparison, speaks quietly but firmly. The interaction is at once less obvious and more compelling. The entertainment provided by the roller-coaster is passive in the most obvious sense – a rider sits, and their senses are assaulted. The “entertainment” provided by the knife is highly active, demanding a sense of acute engagement.
A poetic interaction can generally be characterized as having, or encouraging, three main elements: honesty, mindfulness, and a vivid and refined attention to sensory detail. These elements combine to encourage creativity in the end participant (note the shift away from the word user, as the audience no longer simply uses but instead must actively engage).