

The Mouse And The Rectangle - arjunlall
http://www.dustincurtis.com/2.html

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randomwalker
The Ramachandran referred to in the article is a brilliant
neurologist/neuroscientist
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilayanur_Ramachandran>). You should watch his
TED talk (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rl2LwnaUA-k>), it's pretty amazing.

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manny
wow. That was amazing.

~~~
randomwalker
I was fortunate enough to hear him speak at my college graduation. We are both
from the same town in India :-)

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ChaitanyaSai
This article is sort of a teaser/trailer for this one:
<http://www.imprint.co.uk/rama/art.pdf> [V S Ramachandran & William Hirstein:
The Science of Art]

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mattmaroon
How do they know the mouse didn't just associate the square with the lack of
reward?

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gruseom
Presumably because avoiding the square alone wouldn't explain the preference
for the third option over the second.

~~~
mattmaroon
Could that be just curiosity? The article didn't say how much they preferred
them or for how long. Maybe mice are just gamblers by nature.

~~~
Shamiq
Gambling doesn't seem to serve a species well in terms of my evolutionary
biological thought process.

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mattmaroon
Then why are we where we are? We're the gamblingest species of all.

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jumper
I think the idea of "impossible ideals" is very important tool. For example,
when you decide you'll crack down and never have another bug again, on the one
hand you're obviously doomed to fail, perfection is unobtainable, but on the
other it can direct you towards the bug free end of the spectrum. The idea of
reaching for ever more "rectangular" shapes seems to fit that mind set, as you
approach the "most rectangular" shape.

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Shamiq
Does anyone have thoughts on the applicability of this article in terms of UI
and UX?

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dcurtis
Ha, what a coincidence (or not): I wrote the article, and I'm a UI designer.

I've been trying to figure out a way to use peak shift in UI design for a
while. Mainly, I have been wondering if the same principle occurs not only to
things someone favors in a pavlovian sense (as has been proven), but also to
things someone _expects_ or _wants_.

If it does work this way, then it might be possible to hack it into an
interface and get people to do things subconsciously by exaggerating certain
triggers.

So far, I haven't found the perfect way to do this yet.

~~~
izaidi
I think the tricky part is that peak shift relies on generalizations (like
"rectangleness") being made about a whole set of objects or experiences, so
you first need some kind of foundation (like Pavlovian training) from which a
generalization can be constructed.

When I'm designing an interface I try to make sure it has a visual vocabulary
that's pervasive and consistent enough for the user to learn it from very
little experience. So for example, the opacity of visual elements can be used
to represent their importance; important stuff is brighter and clearer while
unimportant stuff fades into the background. Once the user picks up on that,
they can use it to make decisions about the importance of what they see:
they'll focus extra attention on the text that's 100% opaque and ignore the
text that's half-transparent.

Simple rules like this have existed in design for hundreds of years -- it's
why newspapers give 72-point headlines to "big" stories. What's interesting
now is that interfaces are becoming increasingly dynamic, and the tools we're
using are letting us broaden the design vocabulary beyond just size and
placement and typography.

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gruseom
I always found Pavlov's experiment thoroughly boring. I could never understand
why it was such a big deal - it just seems obvious. But this rectangle thing
is really subtle and interesting.

~~~
randomwalker
The year was 1890. Only 15 years ago did Koch prove for the first time that
diseases were caused by germs. Most of the world still believed in the
inheritance of acquired characteristics. The scientific consensus was that
"ether" pervaded all of space. Men of stature made confident pronouncements
that nothing man-made would ever fly.

Almost everything is obvious in retrospect. And being boring is not a strike
against a scientific hypothesis.

~~~
gruseom
Your list seems to me to affirm my point. None of the things you mention
strike me as boring and obvious, and I have a lot of respect for 1890.
Lectures in scientific piety, not so much.

But as long as we're butting heads about this, perhaps you can clear up
something I was wondering. The article says:

 _[Pavlov] showed that a physical connection can be created between a stimulus
(the bell sound) and the following behavior (the dog's salivation) with no
cognitive interaction._

My question: is that last bit - "with no cognitive interaction" - the received
interpretation of Pavlov's result, or was it just added by the author?

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truebosko
Great article, and to be honest I have nothing to add that wasn't said but can
I say -- The site design is very neat! Love how you switch themes on each
article.

