Survival Form
Almost without exception, our designs include an ingredient we call survival form. We deliberately incorporate into the product some remembered detail that will recall to the users a similar article put to a similar use. People will more readily accept something new, we feel, if they recognize in it something out of the past. Most of us have nostalgia for old things. Our senses quickly recognize and receive pleasure when a long-forgotten detail is brought back. It may be an old tune, a taste of old-fashioned pudding, the odor of a particular flower, the patina of an antiquated table, or, as in most cases the remembrance of what something looked like. Somehow these recollections from the past give us comfort, security and silent courage. By embodying a familiar pattern in an otherwise wholly new and possibly radical form, we can make the unusual acceptable to people who would otherwise reject it.
– From the book Designing for People by Henry Dreyfuss
