• Sensory systems

• Input
• Processing
• Memory
• Output

• What information do your users need to acquire?
• Why do they need to know it? In what context, for what purpose?
• What do they need to know about it?
• What types of information does your device need to gather, through which channels?

• Thermometer
• Mic
• Camera
• Radios (Bluetooth, wifi, cellular, GPS)

http://www.phonearena.com/news/Did-you-know-how-many-different-kinds-of-sensors-go-inside-a-smartphone_id57885

• Interoceptive
  • How am I?
• Exteroceptive
  • What's in the world, where is it?

• Tired or rested?
• Well or ill?
• Hungry or thirsty or sated?
• Stressed vs. coping?
• Emotional state?

• Who/What is out there?
• Where is it?

• Animate/inanimate?
• Conspecific (same species)/non?
• Threat/non?
• Familiar/un?
• Mate/non? or Friend/not?
• Food source/non?

• Distance
• Elevation, azimuth
• Coordinate frames
  • Self/ego (left of me)
  • Object (top of object)
  • Allo/world (North of College Ave)
• Where moving?

• What kind of response?
  • External
  • Internal
• Approach/avoid/freeze
• Signal/remain silent
• Manipulate

• How do events/entitities generate patterns that sensors can detect?
  • Chemical
  • Photic/electromagnetic
  • Mechanical/acoustic

• What is the energy/chemical source
• How does the channel inform
  • What is out there
  • Where it's located

• Tonic (sustained) vs. phasic (transient) responses
• Adaptation
  • Decline in sensitivity with sustained stimulation
  • Most sensory systems attuned to change
• Information propagates at different speeds

• Sensors detect repeating signals
  • In space (textures)
  • In time

• Compare (>1) sensor for each channel
  • Eyes
  • Ears
  • Nostrils
  • Skin surface

• Sensory neurons have "receptive fields"
  • Area on sensory surface that when stimulated changes neuron's firing

• Topographic maps

• Non-uniform sensitivity

• Somatosensation