My picA few years ago i was writing an essay for a course on my university. It was all about human-computer interaction and interface design. In this field psychology is the science you want to get advices from. Temporary memory spans, permanent memory spans, human observation and some other interesting topics. During this essay i read about many experiments psychologists did during many years of research, especially in the seventies. One realy striked my mind though…

Below is a video, created from students on Harvard university. There are two teams, the blacks and the whites. Both teams have a basketball. They run around giving the ball to each other. White players give to ball to whites and black players to the black. Can you count how many passes the white players exchange (if you don’t want to spoil it don’t read beyond this point until you see the video)?

So by now you counted 14 passes. Nice. Did you notice anything weird? Maybe a gorrila crossed the scene? Yah i know, this sounds obserd but check the video again! Not only he crosses he also stops in the middle and hits his chest with his hands! And almost all of you didn’t even notice him.

This is pretty amazing. The outcome suggests that human observation is limited if you are focused on something. This is something i wanted to share with you all. If you have any comments, as always they are more than welcome.