Multimedia and Design - Essay Example

Running Head: MULTIMEDIA AND DESIGN Multimedia and Design College: Q1. Importance of Experiences and Emotions Undeniably, positive emotions and experiences are critical for any product throughout its life cycle. Producers and businesspersons will always be wary of the possible favorable or unfavorable reactions from their clients (Norman, 2004). Consequently, emotion and experiences work together in the lives of individuals and in their self-improvement. Habitually, successful individuals understand the means of taking control of their experiences and emotions and channel them to their own benefit (Norman, 2004). In his book, Norman (2004) has mastered an influential tool for generating extraordinary experiences and emotions for website users. He elucidates why eye-catching things work better by highlighting how attractive things prompt individuals’ creativity and eventually enlarge their mental processes. This renders the populace more liberal towards trivial challenges. Norman claims that attractive things ease problem solving, making such things essential. His book is a sensational reaction towards his critics who postulated that following his rules would lead to development of functional, but ugly designs. According to Norman, “products can be more than the sum of the functions they perform.” (2004, p. 87) In this statement, he implies that objects offer more worth compared to their behavioral function. Consequently, he argues that an object meets three separate requirements in his 3-level design model consisting of visceral, reflective, and behavioral levels. In a personal opinion, there exist differing levels of appreciating things in nature, art, or literature. Norman pointed out to the possibility of having both visceral and aesthetic appreciation in art, nature, or literature. Consequently, one can have visceral responses (or appreciation) towards encountered entities (paintings, sunrise, music, etc.), or comprehend or fully appreciate an entity with a connection to the quantity of knowledge one possess (aesthetic appreciation) concerning the entity in question. This paper agrees with this varience in appreciation. For instance, two people may read a piece of literary work and enjoy the work, but at varying degrees. One person may simply appreciate the reading experience, including the characters or plot of the work, but cannot articulate the specific things he or she liked in the work and why he liked them. On the contrary, the other person can articulate the literature aesthetics, his or her more intensive genre comprehension, literary perspective, as well as literary components, which facilitate a more in-depth analysis of the literary work hence a deeper appreciation of the work. Q2. Philosopher’s Tool Kit In the current 21st century, novel media technologies for such social networks as MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter started transforming the political, social, as well as informational practices of both individuals and organizations across the wold. This trend invited a philosophical rejoinder from the technological philosophers and web developers, with Wittkower being a leading player. While his scholarly rejoinder continues eliciting mixed reactions due to the speedily evolving social networking technologies’ nature, the pressing requirement for attention towards this trend has been highlighted by its influence on the way people maintain or initiate ethically fit social role or bond. In addition, the ethical inferences of such technologies remain strictly interpersonal. The sophisticated network of interactions between users of social networking services and offline and online communities, corporations, governments, social network developers, and other institutions alongside the varied and sometimes contradictory interests and motives of such diverse stakeholders continue calling for thorough philosophical scrutiny for the future decades (Wittkower, 2008). This paper agrees with the fact that “we live in a designed world” (Wittkower, 2008, p. 17) since everything that one comes across through sight, touching, feeling, or tasting have been designed. Moreover, everything was designed for a particular purpose, and it serves such a purpose until another novel product replaces it or another designer finds another purpose for it. For the success of such an initiative, a philosopher must examine the existing trend and changes to determine the best move. As with numerous other aspects of life, and particularly the closely associated basic writing skill, Wittkower (2008) highlights on the significance of observation and practice as leading philosopher’s tools. Primarily, a philosopher must take some time observing others, followed by some quality time of practising the same or mulling over what he or she observes. The more a philosopher combines these two tools, the better he or she becomes. However, one should not overlook the accessible vital resources, which can assist one’s understanding along the way. Via observation and practice, web designers and developers come up with appealing products, which trigger people’s experiences and emotions as discussed in section one of this paper. Undeniably, philosophers are nitpickers and they are less concerned by the manner in which the beliefs people hold about the universe are supported or not supported by coherent argument. Since the concern of philosophers is usually serious, philosophers find it vital to insist on attention to detail. Interestingly, individuals reason in diverse ways via various techniques some of which are legal and others illegitimate. Consequently, using the observation and practising philosopher’s tool kits would facilitate one’s discernment of the variation between excellent and awful arguments in the future. However, this calls for the scrutiny of such arguments’ structure and content with superlative deligence. Q3. Understanding Media For most of the societal members, most of their understanding of the present situations originates largely via news media’s filter. Actually, all of the prejudices and effects, which set agenda, framing, and public content discourse, can be jointly termed as the media filter. Media is an elementary ingredient of the contemporary society (Evans, 2010). Consequently, it is imperative for individuals and the society to comprehend how it affects them, as well as the manner in which it works. For people interested in understanding such facts, “Understanding Media” by Evans would provide a broad array of resources for those endeavoring at understanding media. In order to have a better global understanding, people may need either to shun their filter in gathering of information or comprehend the filter better in order to engineer the information and understand the universe as it is prior to passing via the filter. Understanding media and information remains a crucial step in one’s life. In his book, Evans claims, “Even when you aren’t listening, people are talking about you” (2010, p. 54). Interestingly, most people have functional ears for listening, but they do not engage them effectively. This leads to failure of grasping vital information, which could be a disservice to an individual in some later stages. Thus, it is vital for people to engage in dialogue to ensure they filter information effectively. This shows the need of understanding information filter since bypassing necessitates a precise knowledge of what should be applied, where, and when (Evans, 2010). In an affirmative assertion, Evans (2010) claims that taxes or tax-like charges finance all media operations. “Understanding Media” explores the sectors and institutions responsible of generating mass media, its content of images circulation, as well as the implication of such media images to audiences and wider political systems. Various media sectors depend on diverse communication medium. Undeniably, newspapers depend on printing presses, TV programming on transmitters, and internet on computer networks. All these developments require government control and regulation, and thereby call for public finance (at least in their initial stages). In another interesting statement, Evans (2010) makes a sensational claim that various analog and digital media credit their development to the levies sourced from pornography. Media relies heavily on marketing for prosperity and survival. Some of the most famous media sites offer pornographic material, and this makes various media platforms, especially digital media, to embark on development of such sites to increase traffic into their sites. References Evans, L. (2010). Social media marketing: strategies for engaging in Facebook, Twitter & other social media. London: Pearson Education. Norman, D. A. (2004). Emotional design: Why we love (or hate) everyday things. New York: Basic Books. Wittkower, D. E. (2008). iPod and philosophy: ICon of an ePoch. Peru, Ill: Open Court. Read More