More about the Fovea.

So, my first post so long ago was on the fovea, even if I didn't refer to it as that. I ended it with "let's see what else we can come up with!". And so, just recently I did.

It's a hypothesis of the vaguest sort, and I expected to be dismissed or disproved by everybody I discussed it with...but my visual perception professor didn't dismiss it, nor has anybody else. Still, I offer it up with this caveat: I might be wrong.

I was reading my VisPerception course packet and they went over all of the well-known optical illusions. As I was experiencing them, I was asking myself what everybody does when viewing illusions: "How can I be experiencing something so wrong?" It is pretty rare we get confronted with just how easily our perceptions are fooled.




I tried looking at this illusion with the knowledge of the fovea: that everything we see is a tiny piece of sharpness in the center of a blur and I realized something.

We don't see it like that. We see it like this.

And that makes all the difference.

The other line is actually just a rough approximation of the line that's actually there. We can't see them both at the same time. And while our eyes saccade from one to the other, our peripheral brain is constastly swapping out what it thinks about the other...based on a rough guess of a blurry image.

A hopfully clear description of the entire process:
We look at one end of one of the lines, the left end of the top line like in my fovea simulation. The blurry ends we have of the other line is much further away from the only landmarks we have, the diagonal lines. Our brain tags it as "a longer line". If we then move our eyes over to an end of the lower line, we'll notice that the inverse is true: the blurry line is "shorter". Our brain is confident because it got many rounds of confirmation.

Try this. Look between the two horizontal lines so that all the edges are in your peripheral. You won't be as fooled.

Like I said, the fact that my explanation seems "simple" and "easy" compared to the explanation in the Visual Perception course book (which said that the diagonal lines became depth cues and we viewed it with 3d and perspective in mind.) makes me feel like a bit of a crackpot. Still, I think looking at the world with the knowledge you have a fovea is a real eye-opener.

That's not a pun because it's used literally.

Do Co-Workers = Tools?

People say "computers are a tool.". You hear that all the time, but I don't think that's quite true. Computer Software is more like an annoying co-worker.

(When I say "tool" here, I refer to the first definition: "a device or implement, esp. one held in the hand, used to carry out a particular function", not the open ended second one: "a thing used in an occupation or pursuit".)

Really, tools of this sort are just things we attach to our arms to have a different ending -- like different bits on screwdrivers. I swing my fist, something breaks, I swing my hammer, something breaks. 1:1 ratio. I move my wrist a certain way and the pencil tip attached makes a line that directly corresponds to my movement.

Studies (that I am too lazy to look up and source) say that when people use tools, their body image extends to include the tool. Makes sense. I mean, it's your arm, just making different marks on the paper. As long as youre holding the pencil or pen or brush or whatever, it is consistent that your movements will make a mark when your new bit at the end touches the paper. If we can be fooled into thinking a detached plastic hand is ours just because the pattern we feel and the pattern we see matches up, then we have even more reason to believe a pen or a pencil is "us".
See the hand experiment details.

None of this sounds like software.
Computers are really like co-workers. It does things on its own. It is has certain requirements, it can misunderstand you, sometimes it's sick and doesn't come through with the work you need it to do, sometimes it barges in to tell you things you don't care about while you're deep in the flow zone. Sometimes it's lazy, sometimes it botches what you are trying to do.

And all you can do to communicate with it, is point and grunt at the potentially obscure or mismarked choices it gives you.


Jeff Hawkins said about developing Graffitti that people would rather learn a new and consistent way to write that works than suffer through bad handwriting recognition. He's right. They'd rather use a tool than a translator. People would rather do it themselves. I don't know about you, but that means something's wrong with what we've been doing with computers. All we can get them to do is act like tools so maybe we should either go the tool route, or concentrate more on making them better co-workers.

I'm more excited for the latter.

A Spoonful of Sugar

Now that we've talked about what flow is and what happens to people deprived of it, lets look at it the other way - things people love to do.

Donald Norman writes in Emotional Design that

"emotions have a crucial role in the human ability to understand the world, and how they learn new things...aesthetically pleasing objects appear to the user to be more effective, by virtue of their sensual appeal. This is due to the affinity the user feels for an object that appeals to them, due to the formation of an emotional connection [with the object]."

Flip that around. What if the affinity doesn't just make us like things more and gives us the motivation to learn to enjoy it...what if it distracts us while we do learn it?

Video games, like I said last post, are notoriously addictive and full of flow, bringing enjoyment to those who can get through the learning curve. The Wii has much less of a learning curve than most systems. Let's try analyzing the run-away success of the Wii in several different ways.

What does the Wii do different? It has motion control and a pretty direct mapping of action from analog to digital. When you learn to use the Wii, it usually follows a predictable set of experiences. Before you play the game, the Wii is giving out pleasure in the novelty of the interface, in the vibration on "mouseover", in creating a Mii character. Do not discount the little details, their effect is compounded as we shall see.

The Wii gives you pleasure immediately (In psychology terms, it reduces your anxiety) and continues on until you are capable of experiencing enjoyment - which is pretty quick. Anybody who's played Wii Sports knows that it's easy or at least low-pressure at the beginning. The interface details, the motion control, the vibration on mouseover, these are all causes of pleasure. The simple acts of creating a Mii, throwing a punch, swinging a bat or golf club or tennis racket, or rolling a ball are all acts of flow and provide enjoyment. Winning at a sports game is even more so. Nintendo has designed a console that oozes pleasure while you become capable of enjoyment. This is the path to success in product design.

Lets look at another case study.


I would say that OS X does the same thing.

What if all the eye candy on OSX with the bubbly dock and the big lush icons and the windows that fly around is a critical part of why people grow to love it so much, but has nothing to do with why they keep loving it so much? Because the pleasure allows the mind to open up to the point where enjoyment is keeping the mind engaged. Or as Kathy Sierra puts it, helping the users kick ass.

Of course, there's no argument that pure eye candy is as bad for the brain as it is for the teeth - non-nutritional at best, decaying at worst - but that isn't what we're talking about. We're talking about things that give enjoyment through flow by letting you get done what you need to get done and make it look pretty even when you're not flowing. We've all heard disaster stories of pure eye candy (The Motorola RZR phone seems to be one of those) and we all know that substance over style is the way to go, but what Norman suggest up above and what Csikszentmihalyi's theory seems to agrees with is that pleasure and enjoyment can back each other up and make something that will endear the product to the user for a long time.