[IxDA Discuss] Scale of time perception

[Oleh Kovalchuke]

Indeed, interaction design is design of *perceived* time. "Perceived"
qualifier is superfluous if you happen to be an experientialist (good book
on experientialism and on prototype theory of classification is "Women,
Fire, and Dangerous Things" by Lakoff). Incidentally we perceive gravity too
and can design to modify that perception.

Notice that attention is drawn to time intervals listed below when the time
intervals are violated. Hence design of attention is related but narrower
category than design of time.

To design time one needs to be aware of time properties. All times are
approximate within one order of magnitude.

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*Time* - Perception [*Example of interval perception*] - Possible underlying
mechanism
*----------------------------------------------------------------*

*0.1 second* - perception of causation ["*Is this button sticky or
what?"]*- eye saccade, low level neuron pattern activation - this
interval is
important for nonchoppy animation

*1 second* - perception of interval of taking turns in conversation ["*Go
open that Window already, will you*?"] - ?

*10 seconds* - attention span before it begins to drift from a single task
[" *I like the colors. And the point is?"]* - low level pattern activation
in neocortex - this particular interval is especially important in movie
editing

All time intervals listed above are important for design of perceived system
response time (see GUI Bloopers).
Attention span is important for interaction design of single layout.
Recognition is somewhere in the above time scale.

*1 min* - recall, formation of mental model???, just guesses here

*10-30 min* - formation of flow experience: *["I think I see where you
going", "Where was I?", "What time is it?", "Eureka!"*] - predictive pattern
preactivation in higher layers of neocortex

*1 day* - short memory storage, formation of long term memory: ["*Who wrote
that message about design of time yesterday?"]* - interaction of hippocampus
and neocortex

*1 week* - learning simple skill ["*Gmail? What is it?"]:* Hebbian learning?

*1 year* - learning complex skill ["*Unix command interface? No problem..*."]
- formation of significantly new patterns and propagation of stable patterns
into lower levels of neocortex, Hebbian learning?

*10 years* - formation of values pattern ["*Who am I?" - a midlife crisis
question*] - persistent neocortex patterns

*Lifetime (100 years)* - individual memory [" *Who was that bully in the
high school?"]* - persistent neocortex patterns

*Thousands of years* - societal, cultural memory ["*Who is this God person
anyway*?"] - storytelling

*Millions of years* - DNA memory: ["*Whom will I sleep with tonight?" -
perennial question of selfish gene*] - "lizard" brain

--
Oleh Kovalchuke