Body not moving, heart known

Translator Note: I am interested in interactive design for reference to the human cognitive model, the previous author of "Pattern Recognition" and the design of cognitive efficiency of the pattern recognition of the instinct and its application in the design. Charles Hannon, a professor of pattern recognition in the brain more essential to the principle of functional principles of the article, a total of treats.

Original: You already Know It

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In the ipad's first television commercials there is a side-action: "Absolute power, magic!" The body is not moving, the heart is known (you already know the use it.). A good word for inspiring advertising. Apple's ipad, of course, is a brand new, disruptive market-revolutionary product, completely different from what we've seen in the past, and, as advertised, incredibly easy to start with. So how does a company like Apple do all this?

One answer is Apple's designers ' ability to draw on people's almost instinctive behavioral patterns. The medium of interaction may be something new, such as a multi-touch screen that few people used before the iphone. But you should all know how to squeeze and stretch an object, and this interaction mode is transferred to the screen, the user is very easy to see once after the master. As Alan Cooper wrote in "About Face": "All idioms must be learned, but a good use is to learn only once (all idioms moment-in be learned; The "idioms need" is learned only once) ".

The role of dopamine in pattern recognition

Our brains are always looking for patterns. We look for the kind of model that experience believes can lead to success (in love, in war, in gambling or even in investment, in all sorts of ways). Jonah Lehrer in the book How we decide, when we identify patterns that are familiar to us in real life, the brain secretes the nervous system chemicals that can bring happiness-dopamine. And when you follow this pattern to accomplish one thing and succeed, the source of happiness dopamine will give you an extra pulse stimulation.

If we recognize a pattern but feel wrong, or follow this pattern but the results are not as expected, then we will not get another thrill from dopamine and readjust our expectations. Many neuroscientists believe that the reward system has contributed to the "learning" thing. This process forms a cycle of self enhancement based on pleasure, which leads us to learn from our mistakes and to better understand the world.

Depending on our expectations of the world, the dopamine reward system gives us positive or negative emotions. Lehrer that this is a powerful reversal of the traditional understanding of the role of emotion in the decision-making process. Plato has always thought that reason can overcome emotion, rational thinking is to control the reins of uninhibited emotions. And the only thing that makes us human is the ability to use logic and reason to contain emotions and make wise choices. Lehre's book explains in detail the recent neuroscience study's support for the decision model: emotions, emotions triggered by the dopamine reward system, play an important role in our decision-making.

(Photo: Sue Clark)

This kind of discovery of neurology provides strong support for designing the use pattern in interactive design. Let's take a look at the Merry-go-round (carousel pattern), a very popular form of interaction on the system desktop, tablet and handheld devices. It is described in the Yahoo Design library as a way to render content in a form that slides out of the side of the screen; the display item on each side is shaded by the last display to render more content in the limited visual space that is not in the current pane; the arrow appears in due time, To lead the user to more display content. This is a very simple interaction pattern that users can acquire only once.

Users who are willing to try will be exposed to this type of merry-go-round in almost the first time, but even if the user is first encountered, you can start immediately. Then when the user sees the Merry-go-round in other places, even if the interaction has not yet been generated, the user can immediately identify the pattern. Recognizing a pattern, dopamine ignites the user's pleasure. When the user follows this pattern of interaction, such as clicking on the arrows at each end to get more content, and then succeeds, the brain secretes more dopamine and enhances the user's pleasurable experience.

Carousel mode, from Yahoo Developer receptacle

It is undeniable, however, that neuroscientists have not used MRI techniques to measure the secretion of dopamine when users follow patterns such as the merry-go-round. Today, our study of the response to the real-world model of the brain is still quite limited, and we can only infer from experiments in monkeys or rely on psychologists ' reasoning.

The radar story of Lehrer

Lehrer told the story of a radar in the first Gulf War. The radar needs to observe day by day the dots on the screen that represent the aircraft returning from a particular location in Kuwait's beaches. One morning, the radar suddenly felt rather agitated about the dots of light on the screen, and he did not know why. These points of light are not much different from the points of light he observes day and day, but these special points of light this morning have made him feel bad. Under tension, he ordered the light points to be shot down. This decision saved the lives of all, because the light points were launched by the enemy, in an attempt to destroy the Allied warships on the Gulf missile.

Radar could not explain why he felt that the dots were not returning aircraft. Until a review of the experience and the intervention of a cognitive psychologist, investigators found that the point of the missile light and the aircraft light point in the initial position of the screen is slightly different: the missile light point farther away from the seaside a little. The current radar does not tell the difference, but the brain's subconscious tells him that the pattern of jet-point patterns has changed. This change leads to emotional agitation and physical pain, leading radar to destroy these points of light regardless of the 3,721 order.

Radar's story (and the Other Stories in the Lehre book) suggests that our brain's recognition of patterns and adherence to them is done unconsciously. The familiar pattern appears, dopamine is lit up, the acquisition is strengthened, and we get into a state of euphoria. But if the pattern is broken, or after the performance is less than expected, everything is like a mess, and our brains emit a "predictive error signal." A place in our brain called the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) monitors the activity of the prefrontal cortex, the "predictive error signal" is emitted when ACC monitors the lack of activity between dopamine neurons due to the expected failure to occur (i.e., there is no dopamine secretion). This "predictive error signal" causes other glands, such as the amygdala and the hypothalamus, to secrete chemicals that can lead to restlessness: accelerated heart rate, muscle tension, shortness of breath, and so on.

Anxiety caused by pattern errors

Naturally, we do not want users to be anxious when using the system we are designing, but this kind of thing often happens again. One reason is that we often present an interaction pattern to the user without giving it enough visual guidance. Look at the Roku channel store, when users in the channel interface, want to add a channel to their system, face is a static information form. If there is no prior interactive experience with the Merry-go-round, the user is likely to assume that the 3x4 form interface provides only 12 channels.

In fact, this form uses a carousel interactive mode, and left and right to see more content hidden on both sides. This form can even be switched up and down to get content, but the visual rendering of information is hard for users to know. To make things worse, users can only learn a little about the merry-go-round interaction mode, and then face it again next time. Ironically, Roku is known as Netflix's streaming media player, and Netflix has a great use of the Merry-go-round interactive mode to render the same information form in some gaming consoles, such as the Wii's interactive interface. Back in the book "Design of Everyday Things", Donald Norman defines "visibility" (Visibility): "The correct action should be visible and the operation can deliver the correct information" (the correct controls are visible, and tightly convey the correct information). Roku's Channel stores have failed to do so, and unless further exploration is done, users will not know the use of the carousel mode in the Roku channel store.

Roku's Channel store.

Sometimes the problem is reversed: the user thinks that a design pattern is being used, but not actually. If we assume that a pattern does not work as expected, our brains will think that there is something wrong, followed by anxiety. Take the basic function design of a list of items on a smartphone as an example. This is familiar to iOS users, as well as a well-known feature in Josh Clark's "Tapworthy:designing Great IPhone Apps": a left-right gesture triggers the deletion, and the Delete button prompts the user to confirm the deletion. This design pattern is easy to learn, but other smart phone systems are fragmented and unpredictable. The e-mail system in Palm's webOS, for example, uses the same gesture to remove the user, but without a "delete" button to confirm the gesture, the message disappears from the screen so easily. But in the palm of this OS SMS application, for the confirmation of the "delete" button is there.

iOS left to right sliding trigger delete (Photo: Josh Clark)

The early Android OS did not use a sliding gesture to delete, but instead was removed by switching to the Edit Items page. The ginger Pie version (2.3 version of the Gingerbread,andriod OS) offers more inconsistent user experiences: for example, in a contact list, a right-to-left gesture is a text message, while a left-to-right gesture is a phone call! Imagine a user who wanted to remove a contact from a left-right gesture, but suddenly discovered that he was making a phone call to the contact person, not to be alarmed!

Pattern matching sounds easy, it's hard to do

We are more or less aware of the anxiety caused by this pattern error. Under the Windows operating system, whenever I instinctively move the mouse to the taskbar and want to open a page that I thought was minimized again, I found that the fact that I was looking for a page that was open under another tab, rather than an independent minimized window I thought I would still be anxious, And I've had this feeling every time in at least three years. The popular habit of interaction will not change easily. Because I use three different browsers on at least four computers, I often can't find the home button, which used to be on the left of the address bar in most browsers. But now, the standard installed Firefox 12 browser, whether under the Windows operating system or the Mac operating system, the home button is on the right side of the address bar, and the standard-mounted Safari browser does not have the home button at all. There is no reliable model to determine where the home button is located on the Web browser. But our brain craves a pattern that is joyful, whereas it leads to depression (physical chemical reactions).

Admittedly, each platform, browser and software inconsistencies have their origins, from patent issues to design habits are the reasons. The interaction design will change and advance with time. We cannot be bound by the current pattern of being familiar to the brain. We should use the principle of human brain function that is being mastered gradually. We can learn from the behavior patterns that are not obvious but easy to learn like squeeze. We can do this step-by-step by designing the basic elements of the existing design, so that the new interaction design retains enough old patterns that the brain can identify. We can also cautiously introduce new patterns as additional features: such as the MacBook Pro ' s Touchpad's three-fingered and four-finger gestures, which are not necessarily required, but are easily acquired by the user once they are discovered, and are used in place of the mouse positioning and button operations of the application interface.

In fact, this last resort utilizes chemical reactions in the brain. The "Predictive error signal" is emitted because the expected event did not occur and the results were disappointing or completely unsuccessful. But sometimes predicting the wrong results can be pleasurable rather than scary. Although the results are not as predictable, better things may happen. David Rock, in the Brain at Work, mentions that joy and novelty can also stimulate the secretion of dopamine and bring about pleasurable experiences. This experience is similar to the effect of humor: The joke is funny because there is an unexpected twist to the ending and there is a wonderful result. More importantly, the risk is the least, the best joke: The fall of a dog eat excrement will not let you die. But when the joke is too sharp, inevitably thorn, we have to resist retreat.

The new interaction design can follow a similar principle: if the design brings unexpected pleasures and no one gets hurt (and no data is destroyed), then design can inspire unexpected pleasures and be quickly used to replace the old design you've been trying to change.

Extended reading:

About Face 3:the Essentials of the Consortium design, third Edition, by Alan Cooper, Robert Reimann, David Cronin

How We decide, Jonah Lehrer

Your Brain at Work:strategies for overcoming distraction, regaining focus, and sharable smarter all day Long, David Rock

Source Address: http://ued.taobao.com/blo......ow-to-use-it/