Surf*Mind*Musings

Sam Ruby: Left Right Conflict showcases a concise demo of the stroop effect. This demo shows the power of automaticity, or highly overlearned processes. Rapidly accomplished, not interruptable, and without conscious volition are all prototypical attributes — though not without debate.

These attributes reveal the pain associated with inconsistent interfaces. While button clicks and targetting movements rarely, if ever, reach the level of cognitive ubiquity of word recognition, the nature of highly practiced activity is to make it immune to effort, generating errors and a clear perception of wasted effort when a inconsistent method of control is presented in a UI. Human’s are very sensitive to effort and do not appreciate the wasting of their cognitive resources — at least in the rare case where that waste is recognizable.