::scr Re: Cognitive Friction

[Andy Wardley]

> Some games, mostly the more thoughtful games rather than 'twitch' games,
> have very different interfaces c.f Civ II, Sims, Command and Conquer.

One of the many interesting points in Jeff Raskin's book, The Humane
Interface, is that humans are very good at quickly learning and 
remembering key combination presses.  I think the gaming examples 
illustrate theat well.  Left-Right-X for a 540 McTwist, and so on.

These things get programmed into what is sometimes referred to as "muscle
memory", although I'm not sure how accurate that term is in a strictly 
scientific definition.  Anyway, we do these things fast, as if on auto-pilot.

On the other hand, some user interface task require us to first make some
decision, read some value, or check the existing state of a variable, etc.
These take much longer and force us to think away from what we're doing to
think about how we're going to get the interface to do what we want.  This
breaks thought, takes time, pisses us off, etc.

A concrete example.  Imagine a word processing system.  You can align text 
to the left, centre, or right.  A little icon on the top bar tells you what
the current selection is.  When you press a certain button, it moves onto
the next choice.  So, if you're currently aligning left then you press the 
button once to move onto align centre, again to go onto align right, and 
so on.  To make your selection, you have to check what the current value 
is and then press the button the right number of time.  Or move your hands
off the keyboard to use the mouse and that's even worse.

A better solution is to let them press the button once for left align,
twice in short succession (like a double click on a mouse) for centre,
and three times for right.  That way, they can do it automatically and
don't have to look at what the current value is.  It becomes a programmed
response, in the same way that Left-Right-X becomes second nature after
a while :-)



A