The Principles (Chapter 2 Outline)
1: Organize for Perception
2: Direct the Eyes
3:Reduce Realism
4: Make the Abstract concrete Clarify complexity
5: Charge It Up
Organize For Perception
“Vision is not a mechanical recording of elements, but rather the apprehension of significant structural patterns”
- Our visual system unconsciously scans for survival and for information sake.
- Understanding how viewers initially perceive an image allows designers to construct graphics in a way that complements that perception. (Speed up information acquisition. Equivalent to giving a runner a head start)
Stages of Vision:
Early Vision (detecting & mapping)(Gives structure & coherence to sensory data)
1. Rapidly scanning the field of view for visual stimuli (unconscious)
2. Extracting raw perceptual data in order to get an overall impression
3. Data Mapping inside of the brain. Each area specialized for different types of visual data (i.e. color, texture, shape, etc.)
Late Vision (analyzing & identifying)
4. Focus attention based of rough sketch drawn up in Early Vision stages. Under the influence of pre-existing knowledge and expectations
5. This two stage process provides us unique visual intelligence.
Perceptual Organization
- Preconscious Visual Analysis: discriminating primitive features and grouping visual information into meaningful units (which individual parts go where).
- Perceptual Unit: any group of marks among which our attention is not divided.(four straight lines intersecting at right angles = a square)
- Give the audience information in meaningful units
Boosting Cognition
- “Designing the visual structure of a graphic to take advantage of preattentive processes sets the stage for successful comprehension”
- “Comprehension succeeds or fails to the extent that the information organized by preattentive processes can be assimilated to existing schemata (mental representations), or that schemata can be altered to accommodate that information.”
- Primitive features: bright colors on a concert poster or enlarged parts of a map.
- Early Vision sets the stage for successful Late Vision. Fewer opportunities for miscomprehension
Applying the Principle
- Size, Color and grouping are effective primitive features.
- “An awareness of the audiences preattentive capabilities is a way to intentionally improve the communication quality of any informative message”
Features that Pop Out
- Prominence of visual features is vital to cognition. They need to stand out from their environment. Do not leave it up to the viewer to make small visual discriminations.
