Cognitive Shortcuts: Models, Visualizations, Metaphors, and Other Lies
summary
Argues that cognitive shortcuts can solve hard design problems but introduce predictable biases, backing that with concrete techniques and a working example: uses rubber duck and Please, Mr. Gear to expose misplaced responsibilities, measures vision limits (15° fovea, 20–40 ms saccades) to show perceptual tradeoffs, and builds a Pac‑Man ghost AI using smell diffusion on maze tiles where ghosts set tile smell to zero so multiple ghosts cooperate without extra coordination — simple, implemented, and surprisingly effective.
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chapters (26)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:57Programming is Hard
- 4:40Visual Tools
- 6:49Skew Test
- 8:05Pet Rock
- 9:12Please Mr Gear
- 12:37Metaphors
- 13:55EastOriented Code
- 15:03Code Smells
- 16:03Evolution
- 16:42The Human Eye
- 17:20Directional Vision
- 17:48Skads
- 18:33psychotic masking
- 20:53list of cognitive biases
- 21:48Bias blind spot
- 22:55General advice
- 23:32Pacman
- 24:01Pacman Programming
- 24:32Ghost Programming
- 25:38Biased Solution
- 26:01Pacman Solution
- 26:55Pacman Visualization
- 29:21Body Syntonic Reasoning
- 30:19Bias in Please
- 31:33Conclusion
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