RafaelFajardo

In designing user interfaces, we aim to empower the “user” to understand and control the system at hand. Output via screens and speakers, with input from a keyboard, a touch screen or gestures. Between them, the “user” is understood to be our conscious “mind” – the logical bit of our brain that thinks it’s in charge.

This “mind” is actually not nearly as “in charge” as it thinks it is. In fact, our larger and often much more wise mind – the emotional, sub-conscious, parallel-processing, pattern recognizing part of our nervous system even manipulates and deceives our conscious mind. Articulated long ago as Dual Process Theory, Kahneman formalizes them as System 1 (this vast, quick and automatic aspect of thinking) and System 2 (the small “conscious” mind that logically considers and judges).

There is a basic fitness function to having our conscious mind feel confident, whether fighting, mating, or even making the small decisions that people make to get through a day. But the confidence we are building is with the small and logical part of our minds, deceiving ourselves that things are ok when another part of ourselves might know otherwise.