Figure It Out. Stephen P. Anderson
neuron. If you were to count them, your box might contain about 300 lights. (For reference, your brain has around 86 billion neurons!) Now, imagine that at any given moment, a number of these tiny lights, among the tangled mass of unlit lights, are flickering on and off. These are the neurons being activated, constructing a simulation based on various sensations. Whether you are looking “back” at a memory, making sense in the moment, or imagining future plans, your brain is activating these neurons—turning on a pattern of lights in your box—such that they collectively bring to mind prior concepts. When we mention a perceptual pattern, it’s not at all like retrieving a file from the file cabinet. Rather, it’s like activating this constellation of lights—your neurons—that fire together in that moment to create your present simulation.
Understanding cognition in this way helps you see how unrelated information—such as when magicians misdirect your attention or marketers anchor with higher prices—influences what your brain perceives; these sensations affect which lights get activated. Understanding thought in this way also helps you understand the malleability of memories; if you recognize that every time you “dig up” a memory, you are simply reactivating a bunch of these lights (activating neurons), you can see how memories would change with time. It’s easy to understand how some neurons may no longer activate while new ones have been added to and become part of the memory. This also helps to explain how multiple people can witness the same event yet walk away with different accounts—present circumstances (a triggering event) recall different concepts for different people.
When we talk about designing for understanding, and more specifically attending to every association (whether it’s a story, a drawing, or something else), we’re ultimately concerned with the concepts and prior associations that this activates for an individual. We just asked you to imagine a box of Christmas lights. We could have also included, in this book, an illustration of that box. Either way, you brought that concept to mind. That’s the takeaway.
But let’s unpack this a bit more. Below are three things you should know about the brain as a perceptual organ. When we talk about shifting the cost of understanding, it’s easy to focus on outward things—the stories we tell, the maps we make, how we interact with things—but to really get what’s going on, let’s first turn inward, to understand the changes facilitated by these outward things.
Understanding Is Dependent on Sensory Information
Everything we know, we know because of incoming sensory information. An infant, before she can even see clearly, learns through tactile and auditory sensations. A toddler, by accidentally touching a hot stove, learns that very hot things can be harmful. From an evolutionary perspective, foul smells signal danger, while avoiding stinky foods is probably a good survival mechanism. Our understanding of the world is due to the input provided by the world that comes in through our bodies.
This then forms the basis for the many cases that show how altering sensory information affects perceptions. For example, research has shown that weight has an influence on how you perceive drinks—a whiskey served in a heavier glass is perceived as a more premium beverage. If we turn to car design, with something as simple as a brake lever, sensations such as grip force, lever position, sound pressure, and the noise of a brake lever are all coordinated to shape our perceptions of performance.6
The takeaway for those of us who want to design information environments: When we manipulate sensory information, we alter perceptions.
While some of our senses are far more efficient and discerning than other senses (such as vision for humans), it is ultimately the combination of this incoming sensory information that the brain uses to make sense of reality. We understand and learn with all of our senses—and the more senses you engage simultaneously, the more likely someone will be able to understand and recall that information. (This is critical to understanding why whole-body learning or having tangible interactions aids in understanding.) Understanding is based on available sensory information.
Your Brain Constructs (an Experience of) Reality
Using the incoming sensory information (deemed relevant and worth giving attention to), your brain constructs an experience of reality. The brain tries to make sense of this relevant, incoming information. While we’d like to believe we’re rational beings, good at objectively evaluating things, study after study has shown otherwise. With only the incoming sensory information to go off of, prior concepts to refer to, and the need to reconcile things quickly, our brains can reach some rather curious conclusions. Take this humorous newspaper cover shown in Figure 3.1 as an example.
We see a photo that, while intended to go with the headline, does so in an unintended way. The headline “Violent crime duo caught on video” suggests that the two whimsical characters are the crime duo being referred to. This is humorous precisely because our brain is trying to force a connection where none was intended.
FIGURE 3.1 The humor of the newspaper front page comes from our brain trying to reconcile the headline “Violent crime duo caught on video” with the photo of two whimsical children’s characters.
This juxtaposition of image and headline is what fuels mediums like comedy, comic books, and film. Comics and graphic novels rely on the brain to fill in the gap between multiple panels. In film, edits and cuts ask the brain to piece scenes together into a cohesive story. To test how powerful this can be, grab any two or three photos from a magazine, put them together, and your brain will begin to construct a story that links these randomly grabbed objects together (see Figure 3.2).
FIGURE 3.2 Three images—a spilled wine glass, a cat looking up, and a person unlocking a door—grabbed at random. What story do you construct after looking at these three images?
Withholding or adding sensory information then determines what “pieces” the brain has to work with and reconcile. As with working a puzzle, the brain tries to “make sense” of things by identifying a sensible pattern.
Stated another way: The brain is an associative, pattern-matching organ. But the associations aren’t based solely on the incoming, external stimuli. The brain also brings to mind prior experiences that help fast-forward the pattern-matching process.
Perception Is a Process of Active Construction
While we’ve focused so far on the brain making sense of incoming sensory information, the real pattern matching happens in the matching of this “new” information with prior experiences. The brain is always asking “Have I seen this, or something like this, before?”
RECOGNIZING LETTERS
To understand this pattern-matching function of the brain, let’s take something simple, like a letter from the alphabet. In Figure 3.3 we see the letter “A” set in various typefaces.
FIGURE 3.3 Typographical variations of the letter A. Consider why you can recognize all these forms, even forms you’ve never seen, as the letter A.
Assuming you are an English reader, it’s doubtful you have any difficulty recognizing all these shapes as the letter A. Some of these exact letterforms may even be new to you, but you likely had no difficulty figuring out what the shape is—the letter A. But have you considered why it’s so easy to recognize all these shapes as the letter A? Seems like a silly