Creating User Experiences: Fundamental Design Principles by Billy Hollis cont'd

Notes from Billy Hollis' course

Human visual system is optimized to see structure and relationships, leading to the gestalt principles

Proximity

Similarity

Common fate

Continuity and Closure (filling gaps)

Figure / ground

Stages of human visual processing

Stage One: processing inside the retina
small area of high res and color - where the person is focusing

Tuning to detect edges. 

Peripheral vision is tuned to detect movement.

Stage Two: "Preattentive" processing

Information from retina assembled into shapes and groups

Stage Three: "Attentive" processing

Stores of experience used to interpret the output of state two

 

Gestalt principles come from stage two

predisposition to interpret edges, shapes, and groups in certain ways - unconscious

Conscious interpretation can override the perceptions from stage two, but it takes cognitive work  - users don't like doing it.

"Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug

Most users will see this as 2 mutually exclusive columns of options, i.e. they think they can only pick one option from column 1, and one option from column 2.  Proximity is causing this, so be careful with it.

Yes	No
		Ketchup
		Mustard
		Pickles
		Lettuce
		Tomato
		Onion

 

Objects that are similar override the proximity principle (to a degree), such that most people will see 4 rows of stars, not 5 columns:

 Color, Shape,  or Size can accomplish this overriding of proximity (size is least effective)

This can also be used for highlighting

 

Need to make sure the task the user is focused on is promoted by your software, or inattentional blindness may cause them to miss the thing you expect them to see.