Practical Implications
A knowledge of the Simon effect is useful in the design of man-machine interfaces. Aircraft cockpits, for example, require a person to react quickly to a situation. Imagine that you are flying a plane and there is a problem with the left engine. In an aircraft with a good man-machine interface design (which most have), the indicator light for the left engine should be positioned physically to the left of the indicator light for the right engine. This interface would display information in a way that matches the types of responses that people should make. If it were the other way around, you may respond incorrectly and adjust the wrong engine.
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Famous quotes containing the words practical and/or implications:
“After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implications of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern, the condition of feeling life in general so completely that you are well on your way to knowing any particular corner of it—this cluster of gifts may almost be said to constitute experience.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)