Emotional Design by Donald A. Norman Page B

with these cameras people took around 20 billion photographs. With the advent of digital cameras, it is no longer possible to know just how many pictures are being taken, but probably a lot more.
    Although pictures are loved for the memories they maintain, the technologies of digital picture transmission, printing, file sharing, and display are sufficiently complex and time-consuming as to prevent many people from saving, retrieving, and sharing the pictures they cherish.
    Numerous studies have shown that the work required to transform a picture in the camera into a print that can be shared defeats many people. Thus, while lots of pictures are taken, not all the film gets developed. Of the film that is developed, some of it is never looked at. Of the pictures that are looked at, many are simply put back into the envelope and then filed away in a box, never to be looked at again. (People in the photography industry call these “shoe boxes,” because the storage is often within the cardboard boxes in which shoes come.) Some people carefully arrange their pictures in photo albums, but many of us have unused photo albums stored in closets or bookcases.
    One of the most precious resources of the modern household is time, and the effort to take care of all those wonderful photographs
defeats their value. Even though taking photographs out of an envelope and organizing them in photograph albums is about as simple a way of doing this job as can be imagined, most people don’t do it. I don’t.
    Digital cameras change the emphasis, but not the principle. It is relatively easy to take digital photographs, easy to share them from the display on the camera itself. It is more difficult to print the pictures or email them to friends and acquaintances. Despite the power of the personal computer, paper prints of photographs are easier to take care of and display than are electronic versions. With electronic pictures comes the problem of storing them in some way that you can find them again later.
    Thus, although we like to look at photographs, we do not like to take the time to do the work required to maintain them and keep them accessible. The design challenge is to keep the virtues while removing the barriers: make it easier to store, send, share. Make it easier to find just the desired pictures years after they have been taken and put into storage. These are not easy problems, but until they are overcome, we will not reap the full benefits of photography.
    Portraits of family, though, are different. Wander through many places of work, and you’ll see on desk, bookcase, and walls framed photographs of a person’s family: husband, wife, son, daughter—family portraits, family snapshots—and occasionally parents. Yes, there are also ceremonial pictures of the person with the company president or other dignitaries, pictures of awards, and, in academic offices, conference photographs, where all the participants have gathered together sometime during the conference for the ritual photograph, which ends up published in the conference proceedings and posted on walls.
    But, I hasten to add, this personal display is very culture-sensitive. Not all cultures display such personal symbols. In some countries, the display of personal photographs in the office is extremely rare, and in the home it can be infrequent. Instead, visitors are shown the photograph album, with each photograph lovingly pointed at and described. Some cultures prohibit photographs altogether. Still, the major
nations of the world on all continents take billions of photographs, so that even if they are not on public display, they serve a powerful emotional role.
    Photographs are clearly important to people’s emotional lives. People have been known to rush back into burning homes to save treasured photographs. Their comforting presence maintains family bonds even when the people are separated. They assure permanence of the memories and are often