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This way and that way

This way and that way This entry was originally at http://kingsley.blog-city.com/read/59597.htm Divi often tells me to give her directions as “this way” and “that way” instead of “turn right” and “turn left”.

This way and that way

This entry was originally at http://kingsley.blog-city.com/read/59597.htm

Divi often tells me to give her directions as “this way” and “that way” instead of “turn right” and “turn left”. Though she insists that “this way” always stands for “turn right”, I’ve found that it isn’t always true. On a familiar road, it often stands for the road she is used to taking, and “that way” stands for “What, there’s a road there?”. On less familiar territory, “this way” and “that way” do stand for “right” and “left”.

Last weekend, we were going someplace with another friend Julie, who knew the way and was giving directions. It was a straight road, and for no apparent reason, she said “Go straight”. I was a little amused at this unnecessary instruction. When I looked around, I found that there was a road to the right, which Julie takes to work everyday. So in her mind, the turn to the right was the default, and going straight was a thought out decision.

A while back, Discovery channel telecast a piece on how we form mental maps of the places we live in. These mental maps are biased by emotion and familiarity and are significantly different from the actual geography. I noticed this myself, when we moved houses some 5 years back. I tended to takes routes that ran closer to my earlier home, though they where slightly longer than other routes. In my mind, the higher familiarity of the area I’d lived in, made the route appear shorter. Since these areas where more familiar, I had to absorb less, creating less cognitive load. The whole experience translated into a feeling of arriving faster.

It would be interesting to see the effects of familiarity on software user interfaces. As technology has grown, the user interface has barely changed. Most changes have been incremental and of marginal impact. The next leap in usability has to come from new approaches. However, resistance of users to these approches is quite high. We need to steer them through familiar territory to the unfamiliar but more efficient.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 20th, 2003 at 10:57 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.