A Philosophical Study Of Cognitive Emotional Design

Under the circumstance of rationalism era, which rationalistic logical reasoning as the dominant position, someone thoughts cognition and emotion were opposite. Somebody thoughts emotions were impulsive, wild and reasonless. However, they considered cognition as calm, humanistic and logical things. But for Norman, who thinks the theory is a tale of a tub! Norman deems that emotion is an inseparable and indispensable part of cognition. Emotion not only expresses our feels, thoughts but also provides clews for cognition and organizes and drives some behavior methods of cognition. Meanwhile, cognition gives a help for person to definite emotion-cognition structure.This paper includes three parts. The first part has a brief introduction about the definition of cognition and emotion. Moreover, it also mainly introduces the basis of emotional design that is the three levels of cognition. Due to analyze the differences of the three levels, which makes people understand why designs are in variety. The reasons are people put different emotions into designs, and even in the view of cognition, the different functions of the three levels exist in brain have a deep effect on emotional design. New path has been found by analysis of the three cognitive levels. The importance of the second part is that Norman comes up with a new theory for emotional design which names conceptual model theory. This theory mainly uses for manager and designer who can use this theory too well to solve problems and finally get more satisfactions from the customs. The last part analyze on cognitive artifact. Human creative artifact which can improve human's cognitive abilities. But what affection has been got between artifact and human cognition? Does artifact improve our cognition ability or make us more stupid? Norman thinks it improves human's ability in emotional design and its representative function has far-reaching meanings.The definition of "emotional design" is generalized. It is an idea that more abstract and more superior in philosophy. Design and emotion both are effect human's life. To analyze them deeply, it has a most crucial meaning for us to recognize cognition scientifically.