IDENTITY
PAST
PRESENT
FUTURE
Nostalgic
Fondness for who
we thought we
were or for
experiences
we have had

Definitive
Belief in who
we are and
the community
to which we
belong

Aspirational Desire for who we want to be and the ideals we want to hold in the future

AFFINITY

September + October 2010

interactions

break that down into tenses of time: past, present, and future. Affinities based on self-image come in the same three tenses. Affinity may be nostalgic (past tense) and relate to who we thought we were or a fondness we have for past experiences. It can also be definitive (present tense) and help us communicate who we are and to which community we belong. And affinity may even be aspirational (future tense) and allow us to project who we want to be and our ideals for our future. Thinking about identity in these three tenses helps us to better understand this type of affinity and how it impacts our designs.

A few examples of nostalgic
affinity come to mind when
thinking about brands and pub-
lic personas. My brother (in his
late 30s, an established English
teacher, and pursuing a sec-
ond master’s at Harvard) has
a poster of Walter Payton, the
record-holding Chicago Bears
running back from the 1970s
and 1980s, tacked to the wall of
his Cambridge apartment. To
my brother, the poster repre-
sents a simpler, more innocent
time from childhood, when our
minds were filled only with
pretending we were our sports
heroes, jumping over the back
of a couch as if it were a pile of
Green Bay Packers at the goal
line—not with the troubles of
adult life, like jobs and relation-
ships. The pervasiveness of Hello
Kitty paraphernalia targeted at
high-end consumers (the Pink
Ceramic Diamond Hello Kitty
watch retails at Neiman Marcus
for $2,900) is another example of
the same nostalgic drive.

Definitive affinity is not exclusive to industrial design but relates to other design as well.

Aspirational affinities are also an important type of affinity based on identity. This type of affinity allows us to project who we want to be and our ideals for our future. The online dating site eHarmony is a particularly explicit example in the interaction design sphere. This website and service offers a “ compatibility matching system” to help singles project their values system, character traits, and personal interests (all of which may or may not be accurate), with the hopes of finding meaningful romantic relationships. A second example is Twitter and Facebook, which allow us to communicate what we are about to experience. One element of these offerings relates directly to aspirational affinities: The ability to select what we broadcast about ourselves—in contrast to what we decide to censor— allows us to project an exact image. The pooling of followers and friends that both Twitter and Facebook afford, and again our control over who we do (and do not) associate with, also helps us refine the image we want to project, based on the inclusion or exclusion of others. All of these services allow us to be someone we aspire to be in a community to which we desire to belong.

But the emotional connections wrapped up in these affinities are very challenging to include in a typical human-centered design approach. This is true for a number of reasons. To start, emotions in general, and often the most important ones, link to past experiences that may be distant and difficult to recall. And even