Connecting Dual Information Processing to Tacit Knowing and Interface Design
As I am preparing to write my theses proposal, I was reading some of my previous posts. An Idea that I had then is worth further explanation. I need to point out to the context of my literature review than. At that time I was trying to find out reasons for the need for consistent interfaces. This led me to Shiffrin and Schneider dual information processing theory. This also led me to Michael Polanyi’s theory on tacit knowing. Reading this last post, I feel my final comment on that post needs more explanation. This is the paragraph I need to explain:
Finally, it is worth mentioning, included in our subsidiary awareness is our previous experiences, biases, beliefs, tasks and goals.(Brohm 2005) Out of these subsidiary awareness components our focal awareness is formed.
If our brains only had the two processes of information perception of Shiffrin and Schneider (1997) , than our subsidiary awareness is probably formed by automatically perceived information. The meanings formed from these perceptions are meanings we started attaching since or birth or even before that. Our previous experiences, biases, and beliefs are some of the meanings we are attaching to perceptions every day of our lives. We do need to take care to what meanings we attach. Especially knowing that it takes extra efforts to unlearn and relearn new meanings to our perceptions. And even if we are unconscious of it, these meanings play a role in our focal awareness. Shiffrin and Schneider (1977) found that automatic processes are hard to stop. Once started they usually finish. We can try to attenuate the stimulus that started them or try to start another automatic process to stop them. An example of an ingrained meaning that is attached to a stimulus is one that I mentioned in another post. In china’s stock market red means the opposite of what it means in the US and most of the world. In china red means the price is up!
I do need empirical evidence to support my above claim. There is already empirical evidence that connects automatic perception to racial biases. But, more evidence is needed to support my claim.
I will end with restating the implications to health informatics:
When we design even the simplest interface we are designing a virtual reality environment (a theatre stage). This necessitates the care for the smallest details; as these will be parts of users’ subsidiary awareness. This environment needs to make sense to users. Over time, consistency in this environment’s details will form the users’ logical expectations which in turn will allow users to make sense of things.
