broadsense

Broadsense is a term used in cognitive science, human factors, and design to describe a broad, integrative awareness of environmental information. It denotes the capacity to perceive and synthesize inputs across multiple modalities in real time, emphasizing breadth of coverage over detailed focus on a single stream.

Origin and usage: Broadsense is a neologism whose exact origin is uncertain, but it has appeared in scholarly and practitioner writing since the late 20th century. It is typically used descriptively rather than as a formal theory, and may appear in discussions of situational awareness, media design, and autonomous systems.

Concept and mechanisms: In cognitive terms, broadsense involves distributed attention, multimodal processing, and sensor fusion that yield a gestalt impression of the current environment. In artificial systems, it can be implemented through dashboards, multi-sensor data fusion, and alerting schemes that prioritize breadth.

Applications: Broadsense informs the design of user interfaces that present broad situational cues, robotics that must monitor multiple subsystems, and educational tools that draw connections across domains.

Critique: Critics warn that broadsense risks vagueness and cognitive overload if not balanced with depth. Measuring breadth versus depth is challenging, and overemphasis on broad cues can obscure important details.

See also: Situational awareness, multisensory integration, sensor fusion, human factors, cognitive load.