Unit 1: How People See

100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People (Voices That Matter) by Susan Weinschenk, Ph.D.

Chapter 1: How People See

Susan starts her book off with what she defines as the most impactful of our senses: vision. People see differently than most would expect. What we see, isn't always what we get. For example, take our ability to see negative space as a shape (Image 1). Our brains, without the aid of a defining element, produce a triangle. The chapter makes similar points throughout its duration and relates it to design with topics like: central vision versus peripheral vision and how peripheral vision has more weight when determining the gist of a scene, how people recognize object by using shapes and how the topic relates to iconography, how our brain uses fusiform face area (FFA) to recognize faces faster than objects, etc. The topic on canonical perspective was not well supported in my opinion. Susan makes the point that most people would draw a coffee cup with a specific angle and perspective, and questions why more people don't draw it in a way that is more often viewed in everyday life. I would argue that people gravitate toward the angle that offers the most visual information. The reading goes on to discuss visual cues in the real world like door handles, and expresses how they can mislead users to push or pull. This, of course, can be related to the web. Visual cues tell a user whether something is a button or a hyperlink, etc. The positional relationship between objects, a topic we should all be well versed in at this point, tells the viewer what information belongs to each other. Color, which can vary between cultures, can hinder or improve a website. When targeting a specific audience, knowing how they perceive color can make or break a design.

Overall, this reading was a good review and introduction to the course reading.