May 3 2025
Seemingly physiological sensations in human-computer interactions
This is just a verbalised diary capturing metacognition. Something I have been thinking about procrastinating on writing for a while now.
Recently I was using VScode with Copilot and the screen kept freezing every 2 seconds, the project was empty, there was barely any code, the screen felt smooth… until it stopped being smooth.
When the screen froze, my brain felt as if there was friction on the screen. The physical screen is visually clean and smooth to touch but it doesn't feel smooth anymore.
In the material world, if anything stops moving there has to be some friction, there is no physical thing on the screen that you can touch and remove to make the scroll smooth. but it almost felt like something is applying a force in the opposite direction and there was this urge to remove it.
And that sense almost made the screen come across to me as a rough surface, the shiny retina display didn't appear to be smooth. We have bended the reality at this moment.
Things as Textures
How do you feel when there is fresh snow fall, everything is covered in snow, rounded, smooth and soft. You could just roll on it?
Same thing happens when the UI is full of smooth curvy graphics and a lot more white space. Why is that? Thinking about thinking, for me, it's essentially the smoothness, evenness, absence of irregular textures, that evokes a feeling of trust and ease that I could just roll on the snow in the streets, without getting hurt. There is nothing sharp, spike like in my vicinity that could possibly hurt me, something you can't do on a normal day. Making my brain process it as an once in a while opportunity to just lay down anywhere without worrying.
I am referring to my brain rather myself, intentionally because all of this processing is somewhere between subconscious and conscious. When I am describing it, it might sound like an active thought, but it's not. These are not active thoughts, this is all happening in the background very fast without my active involvement.
But this is too simplistic..
Persian rugs everywhere though have texture, color, and vibrant do not give the same feeling of unease. If you wore a polyster fabric that made you feel uneasy, despite being smooth looking and clean it will make you feel uneasy by just looking.
Every perception is a cumulative expression of past interactions with the material world which acts like encyclopaedia for the subconscious. I guess that's what is called embodied cognition?
It's also true the other way round.. how digital experiences mess with cognitive expectation in material world. A good example is command+z
Couple of weeks ago, on a weekend, I was trying to paint something, I was a bit impatient, wanted my weekend to count, wanted to create a masterpiece in 30 mins. I was rushing emotionally and I did something that was undoable, my reflexive physical cognitive response was to reach out for Command Z, but there were no buttons to touch, to press. It was an odd feeling last for a second but very disorienting and frustrating.
What does it mean for design?
I guess my take away here is to practice thinking about thinking - making use of metacognition to inform design. It is scientific and we can make good approximate deductions about the cost of interaction, perception etc if we know about people's material reality.
Concrete example
Imagine a shape with reasonable weight, it's not too light or heavy.
Shape
Motion
Effort
Discomfort
Sliding
Lifting
Some
Some
Little
Holding around width -uncomfortable
Sliding
Lifting
Low
Low
Little
Holding around width could be uncomfortable
Sliding
Lifting
Rolling
Projectile
Some
Low
Easy
Little - due to sharp corner
Easy to wrap arms around
Sliding
Lifting
Rolling along length like a cylinder
Some
High
Little
Not at all likely to get poked by sharm edges, one less thing to think about
Which ones are more versatile to motion?
Which ones evoke sense of ease?