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Visual Thinking
1st Edition
for Design
Description
Increasingly, designers 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 Visual Thinking for Design, 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.
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.
Key Features
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.
Readership
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.
Table of Contents
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
Details
- No. of pages:
- 256
- Language:
- English
- Copyright:
- © 2008
- Published:
- 4th April 2008
- Imprint:
- Morgan Kaufmann
- eBook ISBN:
- 9780080558417
- Print ISBN:
- 9780123708960
About the author
Colin Ware
The author takes the "visual" in visualization very seriously. Colin Ware has advanced degrees in both computer science (MMath, Waterloo) and the psychology of perception (Ph.D., Toronto). He has published over a hundred articles in scientific and technical journals and at leading conferences, many of which relate to the use of color, texture, motion, and 3D in information visualization. In addition to his research, Professor Ware also builds useful visualization software systems. He has been involved in developing 3D interactive visualization systems for ocean mapping for over twelve years, and he directed the development of the NestedVision3D system for visualizing very large networks of information. Both of these projects led to commercial spin-offs. Professor. Ware recently moved from the University of New Brunswick in Canada to direct the Data Visualization Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire.
Affiliations and Expertise
Data Visualization Research Lab, University of New Hampshire, Durham, USA
Reviews
“Through a detailed analysis of the mechanics of visual cognition, this book teaches us how to see as designers, by anticipating how others will see our designs. Ware summarizes the thread of inquiry that leads through Goethe, Klee, Arnheim, Gibson and Tufte, sifting it for relevance to the artful science of visualization, and condensing it into one eminently readable volume.” – Fritz Drury, Professor of Illustration, Rhode Island School of Design
“All the clanking gears are here: variable resolution image detection, eye movements, environmental information statistics, bottom-up/top-down control structures, working memory, the nexus of meaning, and specialized brain areas and pathways. By the time he’s done, Ware has reconstructed cognitive psychology, perception, information visualization, and design into an integrated modern form. This book is scary good.” - Stuart Card, Senior Research Fellow, and manager of the User Interface Research group at the Palo Alto Research Center
"In this fascinating new book, seasoned professionals, educators and students alike will find that Colin Ware has written an incredibly accessible text that translates years of scientific research into concrete design applications. In a clear and effective manner, Ware provides a comprehensive introduction to the interrelationships among the physiological and cognitive components through which humans process and understand the visual world. This scientific perspective for graphic design provides an additional dimension for discussing the reasoning behind design choices while remaining adaptable to the shifting contexts in which these choices occur." -Paul Catanese. Assistant Professor of New Media, San Francisco State University