I admit that I’ve never been very good at reading analog clocks. I’ve always used digital ones myself. But when I moved to Pittsburgh and no longer had a cable box with a digital clock on it to tell the time in the living room, I discovered that digital wall clocks are really, really hard to find. So I got an analog clock for the living room and between that and the Brain Age clock training game, me and analog clocks were slowly mending our relationship.
Then the subject of displays came up in Human Factors and the teacher insisted in class that analog clocks were faster for telling the approximate time than digital clocks were. Alot of people in class disagreed with her and I really disagreed with her, verbally, even after she gave further reasons for analog clocks being faster for approximate times. Granted, we both agree that digital clocks are faster for telling the exact time. And I think that part of the issue is that my brain doesn’t work with approximate times. It wants to know the exact time and will sit and look at the analog clock to calculate it.
Anyways, the interesting/unfortunately part of all this is that I’ve noticed my time telling skills on analog clocks have gotten alot worse since then. When I look at my clock on the wall, all I can think about is how many extra milliseconds of cognitive processing time it takes to compare the two hands of the clock to figure out which is the minute hand and which is the hour hand, the time needed to realize that the hour hand is slightly before the”10″ and that its thus only 9:55, not 10:55, etc. Its as if all my gripes with the class have been transferred to the clock and my time telling ability has suffered for it because my mind focuses on the argument against analog clocks rather than figuring out how much time I have before class.
Y, I agree with you.
Structurally, your comparison reminds me of the different ways of searching between the old Yahoo style and google. I found reading an analogue clock seems similar with searching old Yahoo, which you start with the large group, then drill down to a smaller group for more details.(eg. time/min/sec) Meanwhile, a google search result and a digital clock tells you a pinpointed result right off the bat. It’s up to you to choose the information that you need.
Also conceptually, I think the analogue clocks are taking double representation or something. I assume the original design was derived from a sun dial with the shadow. The shadow is not actually time, but it’s a representation of time. Even before the shadow, the sun itself is a representation of time also. In that sense, the digital clock’s number present a stripped-down version of time and it’s representation is closer to the abstract concept of time.
And you’re right. Cognitively, to read an analogue clock, you need learn not only the system of time but also the system of the clock. There are angles, directions, two/three hands, numbers, (sounds familiar?) Further more, you might have trouble reading an analogue clock not because you have a problem reading the visual information of it, but maybe, you have been exposed to the numerical representation more than the visual representation of time. (eg. schedules, recording/playing devices, and etc)
On top of that, some peoples are just good with numbers ;)