Understand the fundamental principles of interface design

2.1 Perception

COLOUR
Trichromatic means having or existing in three different phases of colour (Tri = three, chromatic = colour). Humans have a trichromatic system. Refer to page 12 of handbook

POP-OUT EFFECT
Colour pop-out is often used to highlight selected menu options, alerts and input fields. The pop-out effect is often referred to as visual salience. We will look at examples in the handbook Page 11

GEONS
Biedermans theory of structured object perception suggests that our brain breaks down complex objects into simple geometric shapes in order to recognise them; these building blocks are called geons. We will look at examples in the handbook Page 13

TASK 1
Take two input and two output designs that you are working on for your programming assignments and analyse them using the techniques we have covered. This will be used later in your assignment:
Perception: colour eg trichromatic system, luminance, pop out effect; pattern eg proximity, continuity, symmetry, similarity, common groupings, connectedness; objects eg geons, use of gross 3D shapes

Pattern perception
Pattern perception is part of the Gestalt school of psychology, as written about byWesheimer, Koffka and Kohler in the 1930s. A gestalt (old German) is a pattern of elements that is so tightly bound together to form a whole that it cant be described as just a sum of its parts.

Perception
Human beings recognise visual patterns in many things, even tending to invent them where none exist (e.g. seeing different shapes in clouds). If we can understand the principles of layout that involve visual pattern perception, it should be possible to incorporate these ideas into our interface designs. Common terms we need to be aware of include:

Common Terms
Proximity Continuity Symmetry Similarity Common Groupings Connectedness

More Detail
We will now look at these terms in more detail in the student handbook on Pages 14-17.

TASK 2
As you did with task 1, take two input and two output designs that you are working on for your programming assignments and analyse them using the techniques we have covered. This will be used later in your assignment: Perception: colour eg trichromatic system, luminance, pop out effect; pattern eg proximity, continuity, symmetry, similarity, common groupings, connectedness; objects eg geons, use of gross 3D shapes

FINALLY

You have now completed the Principles of Design relating to Perception and we will continue with Behaviour Models.