{"id":309,"date":"2008-08-29T10:46:37","date_gmt":"2008-08-29T14:46:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/?p=309"},"modified":"2008-08-29T10:46:37","modified_gmt":"2008-08-29T14:46:37","slug":"sensory-feedback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/2008\/08\/sensory-feedback\/","title":{"rendered":"Sensory Feedback"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s interesting how much we take for granted when it comes to the design of the objects we interact with on a daily basis.<\/p>\n

After jailbreaking my iPhone yesterday (!!!) I installed the Nintendo original NES emulator.\u00a0 Which is awesome in theory — it’s nice to see my old friends Elevator Action, Super Mario Brothers, Metroid, Rad Racer, etc. again.\u00a0 But there’s a problem: the games are almost impossible to play.<\/p>\n

\"NES<\/a>

NES Emulator for iPhone<\/p><\/div>\n

When we were using the original NES controllers I, for one, took for granted the fact that you get (and need<\/em>) tactile feedback when you’re playing those games.\u00a0 When you’re playing Spy Hunter you’re getting contstant feedback from your left thumb — as to when you’re pushing ‘left’ vs when you’re pushing ‘up’.\u00a0 On the iPhone you don’t get that feedback — it’s just a flat surface.<\/p>\n

The designers of the emulator tried to compensate for this by giving you visual feedback (there’s a little readout that tells you explicitly when you’re pushing up vs pushing left).\u00a0 But this doesn’t solve the problem becaue it’s giving you cues that are a) not in the most relevant medium (visual instead of tactile — which slows down your reaction time) and b) not in a relevant part of the screen (you’re looking where the action is — not where your fingers are.\u00a0 If you’re looking at your fingers to see where they’re pushing you’re in danger of having a Metroid suck off your face).<\/p>\n

\"Old<\/a>

Old School NES<\/p><\/div>\n

All of this, in my ‘I took Psychology of Perception 10 years ago so I totally know what I’m talking about’ kind of way, is to say that Nintendo did something right when they made those controllers.\u00a0 We needed the little raised + of the directional pad (the edges, the clear spatially mapped directions, etc) to input directional data and get the kind of relevant feedback we need to play the game.<\/p>\n

The things we take for granted…<\/p>\n

Maybe next time we’ll talk about Nintendo Synesthesia (although maybe Rad Racer’s pseudo-3D is as close as most of us come to that… ).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s interesting how much we take for granted when it comes to the design of the objects we interact with on a daily basis. After jailbreaking my iPhone yesterday (!!!) I installed the Nintendo original NES emulator.\u00a0 Which is awesome in theory — it’s nice to see my old friends Elevator Action, Super Mario Brothers, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,22],"tags":[26,143,145,146,147],"class_list":["post-309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-nerdiness","category-ramblings","tag-iphone","tag-jailbreak","tag-nintendo","tag-perception","tag-sensation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":314,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309\/revisions\/314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffclarke.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}