This pattern-making ability also causes our brains to assign meaning and create relationships even when they may not actually exist. In the film Jurassic Park, a Tyrannosaurus Rex grabs a smaller dinosaur in its teeth and shakes it around, killing it. The sound of this attack could not be recorded while shooting the scene (dinosaurs are, much to the chagrin of every school-age boy, still very much extinct). And so sound engineer Gary Rydstrom set out to create a sound that would convincingly sell the on-screen images.
So what sound recording did Rydstrom use to emulate a seven-ton predator ripping through the flesh of its prey? None other than his own Russell Terrier, Buster, playing with a rope toy! If you watch the scene knowing this, the effect is rather cheesy and unbelievable. But for the unsuspecting viewer, the brain willingly interprets the simultaneity of visual and aural inputs as indicating relationship and meaning. We see a dinosaur eating and we hear a simultaneous sound. Our brain tells us “this is the sight and sound of a T-Rex eating its prey.”
Proximity Without Purpose
In a car, as you are trying to determine which button to press or dial to spin, your brain is analyzing the proximity of these various controls to discern a pattern which will help you make sense of their functions.
Let’s take a closer look:
Top Row (left to right): Air temperature, front window defrost, fan speed. 2nd Row: Fan off, fan mode (chest, feet, etc), A/C power. Bottom Row: Re-circulate, rear defrost, rear (back seat) fan, outside temperature indicator.
The controls are a combination of push buttons and dials that affects two basic functions: fan speed and air temperature. Each of the three control groups is comprised of one dial and one or two buttons. Your pattern-seeking brain assumes that the buttons and dials are placed and grouped in a manner that has meaning. Unfortunately for your brain, in this case they aren’t.
Here’s a common two-step process you might perform to cool down your car: You’d first turn on the A/C (step one) and then adjust the temperature (step two). To achieve this goal, you must:
- press the right bottom button and
- spin the left dial.
However, while avoiding collisions with tailgaters and cell-phone talkers, you often perform the wrong sequence. you:
- press the right bottom button (1, correct) and
- spin the same dial (2, incorrect).
By spinning the wrong dial (accidentally changing the fan speed) you end up with a hot jet blast to the face.
Reinforce Relationships
A very simple reorganization of your car’s controls would reinforce the relationships between controls and make the entire system easier to use. By placing all the controls that adjust fan speed, and all those that adjust air temperature close together, the position of each control will have assigned greater meaning and users’ overall mental effort will be decreased. The sum of these two factors (increased meaning and decreased mental effort) will result in greater user success.
Controls are grouped by function to decrease mental effort and increase meaning.
In this revised layout, the controls’ proximity to the others reinforces their relationships. The left control group can be spun to adjust fan speed or pressed to turn the fan completely off. The right control group can be spun to adjust air temperature or pressed to further adjust the temperature (top button for automatic temperature, bottom button for A/C).
With these changes, your two-step process for cooling down the car is simplified. Step one is to turn on the A/C by pressing the bottom right button. Step two is to adjust the temperature by spinning the same dial.
Understanding our brains’ fondness for creating meaning and patterns through proximity will help us create more intuitive interfaces and designs. If we take time to think about the way elements are positioned in relation to one each other, our interfaces will seem easier and more natural to our users.
via David Cole SM.
