::scr Re: Cognitive Friction

[celia romaniuk]

On Fri, 21 Dec 2001, Andy Wardley wrote:

> One of the many interesting points in Jeff Raskin's book, The Humane
> Interface, 

Oooh, one of my favourite books. Unfortunately I lost my copy in one of
the Great Redundancies of 2001. If only there were some sort of "online"
bookstore that I could access via world wide "network" through my
"computer" and buy the book with "one click".

> 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.

Yeah. He talks about how humans are basically habit forming creatures, and
that interfaces that work with this characteristic, rather than against
it, fit in with our behaviour and so provide a more 'natural' way of
working.
 
> 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.

Yep. In the course of our work we'll stop and make decisions anyway, but
the idea is to limit these to decisions that are core to our work rather
than being a decision about the interface per se. (So if I'm drawing a
picture, deciding which colour it should be is core; working out how to do
a rectangle is a decision to do with interface).

Celia