Has this ever happened to you?

You enter a large department store to buy an appliance. You browse hesitantly but nothing seems to catch your eye. Row after row of similar products, and comparing prices seems to be your most interesting option.

Suddenly--a thrill of excitement! What a beautiful piece of equipment! You feel an intense pleasure just looking at it and you want to buy it immediately. No, wait a minute! You try to control your emotions, but nothing seems to change your urge. It is as if a force beyond your control were compelling you to buy only this product - and now!

What makes us instantly like an object? The situation described above raises an intriguing question about product development: Can this type of reaction be made to work for us when we introduce a new product into the market?

Understanding how a product's esthetic value is created and judged is scattered across a vast area of knowledge: the trades of art, science of engineering, psychology, philosophy, and, lately, information theory. This book has been written as an attempt to blend the grains of knowledge from these sources into one theory of design.

The verdict? Shaping a product to make its appearance attractive means: (1) organizing it into patterns of visual simplicity, (2) making its function understood through the language of symbols, and (3) referencing or linking it to the visual culture of the time. 

Research shows the fascinating interplay of these components through the ages and civilizations--from the most rigid preferences for visual order as stated in (1) above, to the most malleable for the sake of fashion as in (3) above.  In a world governed by technology, esthetic factors represent the dissent against rigid rationality and the search for the ideal.