lOMoAR cPSD| 966570
Designing with the mind in mind 2nd Edition, Jeff Johnson –
Summary for Psychology of Design
(De Haagse Hogeschool)
H1
perceptual patterns = repeated exposure to each type of situation builds a pattern in our
minds of what to expect to see.
Mental frames = objects and events expected in each situation
Habituation = repeated exposure to the same perception reduces our perceptual system’s
sensitivity for them
Attentional blink = A low-level biasing of perception by past experience occurs just after
we spot or hear something important. Between 0.15-0.45sec we are nearly deaf and blind
to other visual stimuli
McGurk effect = You rather hear the sentence based on someones lip movement than
the actual audio. Only by closing your eyes you will hear what the sentence really is.
Ventriloquism = Know how to talk without moving their mouth much. Your brain perceive
the talking as coming from the nearest moving mouth. The puppet’s mouth.
Illusory flash affect = When a spot flash once on a display but you hear 2 quick beeps, it
appears to flash twice.
Cocktail party effect = Focus your attention to hear mainly what you want to hear and
filter out surrounding chatter.
H2
Gestalt principle of proximity = The relative distance between objects in a display
affects our perception of whether and how the objects are organized into subgroups
Gestalt principle of similarity = objects that look similar appear grouped, all other things
are equal.
Gestalt principle of continuity = Our visual perception is biased to perceive continuous
forms rather than disconnected segments.
Gestalt principle of Closure = Our visual system will automatically tries to close open
figures so that they are perceived as whole objects rather than separate pieces. Gestalt
principle of symmetry = States that we tend to parse complex scenes in a way that
reduces the complexity. The data in our visual field usually has more than one possible
interpretation, but our vision automatically organizes and interprets the data so as to
simplify it and give it symmentry.
Gestalt principle of figure/ground = States that our mind separates the visual field into
the figure(the foreground) and the ground (the background).
Gestalt principle of common fate = States that objects that move together are perceived
as grouped or related.
H3
Visual hierarchy:
1. Breaks information into distinct sections, breaks large sections into subsections
2. Label each section and subsection in such way to clearly identify its content
3. Present sections as a hierarchy, with higher-level sections presented more strongly
H4
Sensivity of the three types of cones:
, lOMoAR cPSD| 966570
Low frequency: These cones are sensitive to light over almost the entire range of visible
light, but are most sensitive to the middle (yellow) and low (red) frequencies.
Medium frequency: These cones respond to light ranging from the high-frequency blues
through the lower middle-frequency yellows and oranges. Overall, they are less sensitive
than the low-frequency cones.
High frequency: These cones are most sensitive to light at the upper end of the visible
light spectrum --violets and blues-- but they also respond weakly to middle frequencies,
such as green. These cones are much less sensitive overall than the other types of cones,
and also less numerous. One result is that our eyes are much less sensitive to blues and
violets than to other colors.
How does the brain combine the signals from the cones to aloow us to see a broad range
of colors? >> Subtraction = Neurons in the visual cortex at the back of our brain subtract
the signal coming over the optic nerves from the medium- and low-frequency cones,
producing a red-green difference signal channel. Other neurons in the visual cortex
subtract the signals from the high- and low-frequency cones, yielding a yellow-blue
difference signal channel. A third group of neurons in the visual cortex adds the signal
coming from the low- and medium-frequency cones to produce an overall luminance (or
black-white) signal channel. These three channels are called color-opponent channels.
The brain then applies additional subtractive processes to all three color-opponent
channels: signals coming from a given area of the retina are effectively subtracted from
similar signals coming from nearby areas of the retina.
Paleness: The paler (less saturated) two colors are, the harder it is to tell them apart.
Color patch size: The smaller or thinner objects are, the harder it is to distinguish their
colors. Text is often thin, so the exact color of text is often hard to determine.
Separation: The more separated color patches are, the more difficult it is to distinguish
their colors, especially if the separation is great enough to require eye motion between
patches.
Color blindness = one or more of the color subtraction channels don’t function
normally, making it difficult to distinguish certain pairs of colors. Most common type of
color blindness is red-green
External factors that influence the ability to distinguish colors
Variation among color displays: Computer displays vary in how they display colors,
depending on their technologies, driver software, or color settings.
Grayscale displays: Although most displays these days are color, there are devices,
especially small handheld ones, with greyscale displays.
Display angle: Some computer displays, particularly LCD ones, work much better viewed
straight on than at an angle. At an angle colors can be altered.
Ambient illumination: Strong light on a display washes out colors before it washes out light
and dark areas, reducing color displays to grayscale ones.
Guidelines for using color:
1. Distinguish colors by saturation and brightness, as well as hue. Avoid subtle color
differences. Make sure contrast between colors is high.
2. Use distinctive colors. Recall that our visual system combines the signals from retinal
cone cells to produce three color-opponent channels: red-green, yellow-blue, and
blackwhite (luminance). The colors that people can distinguish most easily are those