HeyJaredHCI Explained
Curious about how humans interact with technology? HCI Explained breaks down complex Human-Computer Interaction topics into clear, engaging stories. From agency and automation to design ethics and UX psychology, we explore how tech shapes what it means to be human.
- Indexed episodes, last 90 days
- 5
- Latest publication
- Jul 15, 2026
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- Earliest in this view
- Jul 7, 2026
Latest episodes
The Invisible Math of Human Frustration: The Three Kinds of Cognitive Load #HCIExplained S2E14 (opens the original)
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Your brain has a budget. Good design either spends it wisely or blows it. Not all mental effort is the same — and that distinction turns out to matter enormously for how we design things people actually want to use. Cognitive load theory started in educational psychology, but its core insight migrated quietly into UX and product design, where it shapes decisions from the layout of a settings screen to the way a checkout flow asks for your address. This episode traces that idea carefully: where i
The Map in the User's Head #HCIExplained S2E13 (opens the original)
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Your mental model of an app and the designer's rarely match — and that gap explains a lot. Every time you tap something and get a surprise, every time a feature hides somewhere you'd never look, every time a tool feels like it's working against you — there's a good chance you're bumping into a mismatch between the map in your head and the one the designer drew. That gap has a name in human-computer interaction research, and understanding it changes how you see almost every digital experience you
What Norman Meant by Affordance #HCIExplained S2E12 (opens the original)
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The word "affordance" is everywhere in design — and almost always wrong. Don Norman borrowed a term from ecological psychology, put it at the heart of design thinking, and then watched it get mangled for three decades. Designers use it to mean roughly "what something looks like it does" — but that's not quite what Norman meant, and the gap between those two ideas turns out to matter enormously for how we build things people can actually use. This episode is a careful look at where the word came
The Anatomy of a Button #HCIExplained S2E11 (opens the original)
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What makes a button feel clickable — and what happens when it doesn't? A button seems like the simplest thing in design. Press it, something happens. But beneath that transaction sits a surprisingly rich set of decisions: about visual signals, about feedback, about what it even means for an interface element to feel interactive. Get those decisions right and users never notice. Get them wrong and frustration accumulates in ways that are hard to diagnose and easy to blame on the user. This episod
Type as Voice #HCIExplained S2E10 (opens the original)
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Your font is already talking. The question is whether you're listening. Before you read a single word, the typeface carrying it has already made an impression — formal or casual, trustworthy or playful, easy or exhausting. That's not a metaphor. It's a measurable effect that shapes how people feel about the content, the interface, and the organisation behind it. In this episode, we slow down and look carefully at one of the most overlooked layers of digital design: typography. Not as decoration,
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