Visual Thinking for Design

Visual Thinking brings the science of perception to the art of design. Designers increasingly need to present information in ways that aid their audience’s thinking process. Fortunately, results from the relatively new science of human visual perception provide valuable guidance.

In this book, Colin Ware takes what we now know about perception, cognition, and attention and transforms it into concrete advice that designers can directly apply. He demonstrates how designs can be considered as tools for cognition – extensions of the viewer’s brain in much the same way that a hammer is an extension of the user’s hand. The book includes hundreds of examples, many in the form of integrated text and full-color diagrams.

Experienced professional designers and students alike will learn how to maximize the power of the information tools they design for the people who use them.

• Presents visual thinking as a complex process that can be supported in every stage using specific design techniques
• Provides practical, task-oriented information for designers and software developers charged with design responsibilities
• Includes hundreds of examples, many in the form of integrated text and full-color diagrams
• Steeped in the principles of “active vision,” which views graphic designs as cognitive tools

Designers of all kinds, including professionals and students in information design, industrial design, interaction design, web design, and users of information visualization, who need practical guidance in visual and cognitive science in order to excel at their jobs—or future jobs.

VISUAL QUERIES
The Apparatus and Process of Seeing
The Act of Perception
Bottom-Up
Top-Down
Implications for Design
Nested Loops
Distributed Cognition
Conclusion

WHAT WE CAN EASILY SEE
The Machinery of Low-Level Feature Analysis
What Stands Out = What We Can Bias for
Visual Search Strategies and Skills
Using Multiscale Structure to Design for Search
Conclusion

STRUCTURING TWO DIMENSIONAL SPACE
2.5D Space
The Pattern-Processing Machinery
The Binding Problem: Features to Contours
The Generalized Contour
Texture Regions
Interference and Selective Tuning
Patterns, Channels, and Attention
Intermediate Patterns
Pattern Learning
Visual Pattern Queries and the Apprehendable Chunk
Spatial Layout
Horizontal and Vertical
Pattern for Design
Examples of Pattern Queries with Common Graphical Artifacts
Semantic Pattern Mappings

COLOR
The Color-Processing Machinery
Opponent Process Theory
Channel Properties
Principles for Design
Color-Coding Information
Emphasis and Highlighting
Color Sequences
Color on Shaded Surfaces
Semantics of Color
Conclusion

GETTING THE INFORMATION: VISUAL SPACE AND TIME
Depth Perception and Cue Theory
2.5D DESIGN
Affordances
The Where Pathway
Artificial Interactive Spaces
Space Traversal and Cognitive Costs
Conclusion

VISUAL OBJECTS, WORDS, AND MEANING
The Inferotemporal Cortex and the What Channel
Generalized Views from Patterns
Structured Objects
Gist and Scene Perception
Visual and Verbal Working Memory
Thinking in Action: Receiving a Cup of Coffee
Elaborations and Implications for Design Novelty
Images as Symbols
Meaning and Emotion
Imagery and Desire
Conclusion

VISUAL AND VERBAL NARRATIVE
Visual Thinking Versus Language-Based Thinking
Comparing and Contrasting the Verbal and Written Modes
Linking Words and Images Through Diexis
PowerPoint Presentations and Pointing
Mirror Neurons: Copycat Cells
Visual Narrative: Capturing the Cognitive Thread
Cartoons and Narrative Diagrams
Conclusion

CREATIVE META SEEING
Mental Imagery
The Magic of the Scribble
Diagrams are Ideas Made Concrete
Requirements and Early Design
The Creative Design Loop
Visual Skill Development
Conclusion

THE DANCE OF MEANING
Review
Implications
Design to Support Pattern Finding
Optimizing the Cognitive Process
Learning and the Economics of Cognition
Attention and the Cognitive Thread
What’s Next?