My physical workspace is full of subtle cues. The books I read or bought most recently are lying out. Papers I’ve accumulated are lying in stacks on my desk, very roughly arranged by their relationship to each other. I notice a broken door every time I walk by it. These cues together give me a kind of “peripheral vision”: when I’m doing one thing, it’s easy for me to fluidly notice other nearby things.
Software systems, by contrast, often lack this kind of peripheral vision.