nudging interactions

Even reading just the introduction to "Nudge" by thaler and sunstein inspires me to recast interaction design as the art of offering unlimited options in a manageable way. Or, equivalently, to recast their book as an exploration of how to embody Cooper's "novice, intermediate, expert" framework for interface design (which provides for multiple depths of learning-curves -> multiple densities of information for different user types) in other contexts.

While I'll probably soon find that they authors have already clarified all the following in the body of the book, I'll lay out my thoughts before they get all tainted and warped:
- Nudge asserts that there is some overlap between traditional (economic) costs/incentives and "cognitive effort" (and presumably other various) costs/incentives - but I think this might better be summarized simply as time. Cognitive efforts (research, analysis, interpretation) always require time, and other activities that benefit decisions - while they partially overlap cognitive efforts (reading, identifying what to read, formulating the question to ask someone) - require little or no cognitive effort (asking for an opinion, looking at more choices, sleeping on it) but always require time.
- Another way to approach this is that people just don't pay attention. Perhaps it should be a core principle (of industrial design? interaction design?) that the design should support the greatest range of awareness possible. This would mean that the design provides rich, pleasurable functionality whether the user is a total novice with zero interest in the item itself or a total geek who documents every aspect of the experience cycle. i.e. let the device play as big or as small a part in the user's life as the user may desire.