It's good to be unhappy: Don Norman at TEDxKAIST

you these lights on and the projector these Toby you had another projector he was lying this is my car this is my outline but the last TED talk by Dan pink that's my talk the trouble with engineers and I have to do this all the time to tell people is that you are too logical you want the world to be the way you want it to be which is not the way that it is so I am here to tell you that I am a nerd I got my degree in electrical engineering from MIT I was in fact at MIT at the same time as president Nam soo was at MIT except I graduated two years before him well he has to listen to me I am older and I got a master's degree in electrical engineering and a PhD in psychology because why do you make all of this technical stuff you make it so people can use it so you must understand people so in fact dr. Yeoh said he was the leader that art needs technology but no I agree with the literature argument technology needs art and what we need for design and people who can understand other people so how many of you are unhappy oh I was told that all the students at Christ were unhappy how many of you are how many of you are happy how many of you are unhappy now you see I think if you listen to the stories of the people you just heard it was so easy to launch satellites right it was very simple there's no problem you get the job or is very simple to become a musician and to go to England this study I'm sorry go to the United States to study you went to a great study um no being successful means not doing it the normal way means actually going through lots and lots and lots of pain and difficulty until I am going to argue that being unhappy is not only good but necessary so let me start it's the yin and yang it's drama it's comedy and tragedy you can't have happiness unless you also have unhappiness you need the two they contrast with each other so I want to talk about three words or three pairs happy and sad satisfied and dissatisfied and optimism versus pessimism and I'm going to say that what might be good is it's not bad okay to be sad or unhappy and I don't want you to be satisfied I want you to be dissatisfied but I want you to be an optimist and the reason you have to be dissatisfied if so you can do something about it what you want to do is go around that observe you're an observer right you go around you watch people and you want to make them have that special look in their eyes but what if they don't then you're not satisfied you have to find what it takes to make them satisfied so first step is don't worry about being happy recently interviewed by someone who wanted to know he's going around the world of interviewing people and to understand what makes people successful and every one of the people he interviews says I'm not successful I don't know what it means to be successful and if you really want to be successful do not try to be successful but you have to do to figure out what you like to do because that's what you will be good at and if other people think it's not important so what now when you decide what it is you like to do it may turn out with some of the requirements are things you don't like to do that's okay then go learn those things you don't like to do but remember the goal is do things well and do them do things that make a difference and I'll come back to that let's talk a little bit about psychology because that's what this is really about happiness is a state of mind satisfaction is a judgment this is a state even even measure it with specialized equipment this though is a judgement that we cannot measure but you can measure it yourself whether you're satisfied which means you have to have goal and you have to have an outcome you have to predict what might happen and you compare how well you're doing and then you are satisfied or not and optimism and pessimism our points of view and points are view let me explain a point of view I don't like you slides or get in my way I can't change what I'm saying by other people but suppose I am using slide which I have you have a slide advanced listener it is so close I'm using slides and I've just shown you a slide I've shown you this slide and I've shown you this slide and now I want to show you this slide and I have the controller and it has two buttons one's on top and ones below it which button gives me the next slide how many people think is the top button how many people think is the bottom button when I first tried this I did it first him and I first encountered this in Asia and I said well next slide top button then it went backwards and I said oh my goodness I've hit a cultural divide this must be something that Asians do and Americans are different but know half of you said top and half of you said bottom and so I tried the same question in the United States and as the people said topic half the people said bottom and I tried it again in Europe and the same result but it is a cultural difference usually top usually means going forward but uh now imagine I have the slide so here is my slide is in your head here's the slide and here's a slide and here's a third slide in the fourth slide and the fifth slide and the sixth slide and Here I am now when I push the button who moves if I move through time see I hit the I want next slide I go forward I hit the top button but if what I'm doing is they come to me so I want the next slide come on I hit the bottom button yet the same problem leave in the early days and I'm so old I remember this when we first designed the graphical user interface the computer you are used today well we're getting rid of it but before that where you have a mouse and you have a scroll bar you have to move this you're reading you hit the bottom of the screen you want to read more you have a scroll bar which way free to move the scroll bar up or down you would not believe we argued about that for about three years and it's a point of view the point is this when I move the scroll bar am i dragging the text down if so then when I want to read the board at the bottom I want to lift the text up right I lift up or is the text fix that I'm moving the window so which button is correct they're both correct and depends upon your point of view which scrollbar method is correct they're both correct it depends on your point of view points of view is worth everything points of view with what really matters and optimist pessimist is appointed what's in the head really matter so let me tell you another one that does makes no logical sense I'm going to put a narrow plank it's going to be I don't know 50 centimeters wide and I'm going to walk along this Nile Clank and they're laid on the top right here and if I walk on this narrow plank it's easy I can do that and you guys can jump up and down I don't even have to look right it's simple now I'm going to do is take this plank and put it high up in the air I'm not even to go on it why it's so simple to do in the ground why is so hard what is up in the air it's all in the mind and it's all emotional and let me say engineers think that we are logical rational beings no we're not we're emotional it's all about emotions really logic logic is not natural if logic was the way we thought we would not have to teach it in school logic is not natural emotions are natural and emotions are very complicated this what an emotional system is doing if it's making a value judgment this is safe is this dangerous is this good or is this bad and there are at least three levels of them one of them is really fast because if I'm walking off the edge it has my emotional system has to detect that edge and know is dangerous really fast to stop another part of the emotional system which is sort of a middle level is always expecting something to happen and comparing what did happen is what you expected you're driving your car suddenly there's something in front of you you put your foot on the brake and the car does not slow down and the first thing that happens is your stomach goes good your stomach that's the emotional system and it's fast it's really fast you can see sort of these things in operation I take a heavy weight and I drop it on my toe I feel it hit my toe and I say oh oh because it doesn't hurt but it will the emotional signals go on big fat nerves all the way from the toe up to the brain the pain signals go on narrow skinny herbs and it takes them some time you actually have about a second or more between knowing that your foot has been injured and feeling it we have different systems emotional that some of them are fast assembling them are slow and the slowest of the emotional system the first one is just a state danger we're safe the second one is an expectation evaluation that booth that isn't what I expected or yeah that's just what I expected that's good and the third one is associating blame or credit which is hey that result was really good because of me and I feel great or that result was really good it was because of you and I give you praise or that result was really horrible because of me feel very guilty or is because of you and I'm going to blame you but those are more cognitive slower or develop they cause reflection all of these are involved in making someone successful or not successful or happy you're not happy what I'm here to say is the psychology is really critical it's all really about psychology don't laugh at emotions because if you actually try to figure out the neural circuitry underlying emotion its electrical and chemical and extremely complex and it changes the way the mind works so if you want to be really creative be happy in the world of design when we want to have people be really creative the first thing we do is we will always thought in the morning never at the end of the day because the day gets in the way so we want to start you with a fresh mind and we start playing games they give you good food we play games we tell jokes and then we start creating and there's no criticism allowed just create and creative people are often happy people not always but the being happy makes you more creative your sensitive your other changes I was at Apple computer for quite a while and it was one of the best places I've ever worked in go with creative wonderful people and we always had new ideas and the CEO at the time when I first joined with a man named John Sculley it was very very bright and understood the business but he would call me into his office like every week and say Don I have a new idea stop everything you're doing could I say but you said that last week yes but this is a better idea and sometimes it was but his ideas would take 200 engineers two or three years to do if you change your mind every week the end result is nothing happens when Steve Jobs came in he said I have an idea and you're going to do it and you said oh wouldn't it be better if you get this the job said you you can translate that in your life that say it once more you fire that is to say I don't want other ideas I have the vision of what I want and now I want to make sure that we executed you know what it takes to execute well anxiety if you're working for a company here's what I recommend you want good ideas throw parties tell jokes have fun create when you decided which of those ideas you're going to do figure out how long it will take it's going to take you nine months to do that okay I want it in six months I want you to be nervous I want to come after you all the time and say what's okay how far did you get show me no that's not good enough I want you to be unhappy because when you're unhappy it's like when I'm walking on this plank way up in the air I am focused so there are two major levels of emotions we call them positive valence and negative valence just positive and negative when you're positive you're happy you're relaxed or no danger is comfortable I can create do anything I want when I'm negative I'm focused trying to solve the problem in front of me and to be successful you need to have both it's really interesting if you look at the way the world of three different fields medicine design in psychology of Keynes recently it used to be about fixing broken things medicine fixed you when you was sick where you broke your arm psychology studied sick people weird mental ailments tried to find out you know why we could not solve some problems and mistakes we made in thinking and designers well in early days of computers for example we all worry about nobody could understand them because they were well because they were designed by engineers and they were just completely incomprehensible to normal people so we spent a lot of time on that and medicine was quite successful in healing people and psychology was quite successful at understanding what was going on and designers were quite successful in designing the modern computers we have today that we actually could understand use and so now it's time for the next big change which is take a look at the iPhone it really doesn't do that much more than you can do with other traditional things but it's so much more and if somebody who studies usability the iPhone is hard to use sometimes I say change the time zone and people say oh and they finally do it and they say see wasn't that easy it's fun and so that's where we are now as it is trying to understand wellness and psychology is trying to understand happiness and design is trying to introduce pleasure and experience now one last thing for Maximus you actually heard a lot today from other people but I'll give you mine which is one of them is never solve the problem is given to you it's always the wrong problem figure out what the right problem I've already told you another one which is who would make sure you do the things you really love to do because you'll do it well don't do what you think other people want you to do because you won't do it well don't solve don't concentrate on the urgent problems if you do if you spend every day solving what's important that day the urgent problem you will never solve the important problem the important problems never they take a long time so you say to yourself oh I don't do it today is okay writing a book is a good example if I write a lot of books so let me tell you it's hard to write a book in any excuse not to write is wonderful and so it's really important to read the news or answer my email or oh my goodness as soon as in trouble oh my goodness my Gein want to see me oh my goodness this is that hooby know you have to block off time and do the important thing a few hours every day every day every day at a few years later you have something important because in the end what you want to do in life is do the important things what you want to do in life is your the important things that make a difference so that in the end you will be satisfied and you will have pleasure and whether you're happy or not I don't care thank you you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 6,755

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Keywords: tedx talk, The Design of Everyday Things, ted talk, ted, TEDxKAIST, TED, ted x, Design, tedx, KAIST, ted talks, Don Norman, tedx talks, TEDx

Id: 5HwMYX8gbHs

Length: 22min 41sec (1361 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 15 2010