Sense and Sensorium
You’re sitting on an airplane, waiting to take off. Your window shade is closed. You’re looking ahead as the engines rev and you accelerate…
You’re sitting on an airplane, waiting to take off. Your window shade is closed. You’re looking ahead as the engines rev and you accelerate down the runway. It reaches speed and the plane begins to rise. It powers skyward.
As you climb, the front of the cabin seems to tilt upwards. That’s as it should be, right? The front of a plane tilts up towards the sky as it climbs.
But why does it look this way?
From your position with no view of the horizon, you have no visual cue that the front of the plane is elevated. So how does it “look” higher?
Also: The front looks like *much* higher than it should. You perceive 25 or 35 degrees of pitch. But the average passenger plane has a maximum takeoff angle of about 10 degrees!
What’s happening here? I think it’s an illusion that has to do with the vestibular system, one of my favorite structures in the body, and source of some great cognitive dissonances.
Your vestibular system solves vexing engineering problems like sensing input lag and momentum in a completely ridiculous way. And it reminds us how confused things can get when our senses are poorly adapted to our environment. If I have any of the science here wrong I hope someone will correct me.
Briefly, you have a tiny labyrinth of canals in your inner ear that contain some fluid and tiny hairs. As you move, the fluid sloshes around and stimulates the hairs. This is converted to electrical impulses which your brain reinterprets as information about motion, acceleration, momentum, awareness of your body position, and more. Amazing!
This makes it possible (although perhaps not advisable) for us to do cartwheels in the dark, or to know that we are upside-down even with our eyes closed. Vestibular information is seamlessly integrated with our other senses to form what’s called our sensorium: Our awareness of our perceptions as a whole.
Wikipedia has a terrifying page for “Sensory Illusions in Aviation” with two sections dedicated to ways that vestibular illusions can kill pilots. After some Googling I found people who think that the plane cabin illusion is caused by vestibular confusion.
Our sensorium is amazingly well-adapted to evolutionary survival or performance in an Olympic gymnasium. But perhaps not jet airplanes.
How does product management relate to these ideas about senses and sensorium? I have sometimes felt like I was on a rocket pointed at the moon, even though data showed something else. And I remember feeling thwarted by a focus on measurements that might not reflect what’s most important.
The Product Manager’s sensorium brings together their ability to sense the environment and interpret what’s most relevant to their teams. Always be challenging your assumptions about whether your “senses” are bringing you the information that you need to make great decisions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestibular_system