Visual perception, attention, cognition, memory, and interface design

Reading Reflections week3:

Gestalt principles of visual perception
Visual attention
Information foraging theory
The UX Book: Process and Guidelines for Ensuring a Quality User Experience (chapter 22.1-22.3)

How does this information about visual perception, attention, cognition, and memory translate to usability and interface design?

The designers design interactions for the best UX, which the target is human. So, the designers have to study nature of human, capabilities and limitations, in order to come up with the corresponding design. Especially, when the designer design for a new environment, such as virtual environment, the designing guideline that worked on an existing PC may not work well with the new environment. The designers have to go back to the beginning considering how people will perform, perceive, and response in the environment. The knowledge in the area of visual perception, attention, cognition, and memory translate provides the useful clues for the design in order to reach the desired UX.

How can we apply this information to interface design?

The designers can apply laws and knowledge in visual perception, attention, cognition, and memory to reach satisfactory interface design. The knowledge could help from the improvement of information architecture design to the appearance of the visual interface. Information foraging theory is helpful for information architecture design as well as conceptual model design. Gestalt laws, concepts from the UX book, and concepts in visual attention are beneficial for visual presentation.

One great example of applying this knowledge came from the UX book. The writer explained that game designers use animations to catch user attention while essential information is loading. The animation could be a distraction in some situations. However, if we apply it to be a focal point in a Gestalt principle, the ability to catch user attentions could be useful also. As the nature of the attention that human can have several focuses of attention at a time, but the performance will be dropped. Using a nice animation to catch user attention away from the slow loading information provide the smooth user experience.

Good Interface Design: Word Lens Application

Word Lens is an augmented reality application that the designer did a great job in interface design. Have you ever visited other countries where the language they used was not your native language? If you used to be there, needed quick translation, and used the traditional way of translation like dictionary on your smartphone, you will truly appreciate this brilliant design.

I considered this application as a good design because the designer understood what the user focus was when s/he needed a translation. Then the designer designed the interaction corresponding to it.

When you find a word that you need its meaning, your focus is on the visual appearance of that word surrounding by its visual context. The traditional interaction, typing the word and reading the meaning on a smartphone, pulls you away from you focus. It causes confusion if you need further action toward the surrounding visual context. This design fully solved the problem by augmented the translated word on the same scene.