The second chapter of Design for Emotion by Aarron Walters goes into detail about the evolution of human emotion and how that is worked into web design.

Walters discusses the Hicks Law which is a design principle. Hicks Law “states that the time it takes to make a decision increases with the number of alternatives.” (Walters, 24). Web designers should be wary of cluttering up their web pages’ home page. Walters discusses how Tumblr has a simple home page and is a great example of Hicks Law. I like the idea of a website de-cluttering their websites homepage to draw in traffic to their sites. I personally am a fan of clean and easily navigate able websites but I never knew that someone had already created a design principle about the idea.

Walters discusses the emotional evolution humans have progressed through. He suggests that humans are narcissistic and that we see ourselves, at least a little, in everything. I don’t believe that humans are narcissistic to the point that we seek what we know best in the world which is ourselves, I would like to believe that people are able to see things the way they are for what they are. I do believe that we see something familiar, just not necessarily ourselves. But his brief description of the golden ratio the ancient Greeks created is an interesting way to look at beauty in design.

Originally posted at Grace Vojvoda