dessalles

Not sure how I came across it, but I’m absolutely mesmerized by this goal Alexander Ovechkin scored a couple years ago. If you look closely, I think you can spot the exact moment his consciousness exits his body in need of a better angle from which to manipulate his arm and its wooden prosthesis. In the paranormal sciences, the phenomenon of seeing oneself from a third-person perspective is known as Astral Projection. In neurology it’s referred to as Out-of-Body Experience (OBE). I’ve always argued that sport – a mapping of artificial rules and fabricated contexts into powerful and precise physical movements – is by far the most mentally demanding of human activities. And so it didn’t surprise me when I started hearing sports psychologist describe visualization and mental rehearsal as effective techniques for athletic development. I imagine the process of practicing via mental imagery, instead of physical practice, is a form of OBE training – conditioning the mind to visualize oneself from the third-person during competition.

Being an experience designer, I suppose I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how people experience things; so I’m drawn to this idea of out-of-body experiences. The thought of enhancing a product experience by inducing what some consider to be a neurological disorder, and what others understand to be wandering astral bodies, is entirely alluring. But with some seriousness, out-of-body experiences aren’t too far removed from the interaction design concept of an interface’s mental model. Particularly in more immersive interactive experiences, it’s thought to be fairly critical users have what amounts to an out-of-body image of the entire interface. When on-screen elements are organized spatially, a users ability to place their current view of the interface into a larger cognitive map is what prevents disorientation. This idea is largely inherited from urban planning theory. Navigating a city, like navigating an interface, requires some ability to map a group of immediate landmarks and visual cues to a broader mental image of a landscape. The absence of that mapping is typically accompanied by the sensation of being lost. continue reading »

Ben and I had a little free time at the office today. T-shirts soon.