Getting Graphics
The Meaning of Pictures
A picture is an artifact of creative play and thoughtful decisions. While the designer assumes the viewer understands a message, the viewer must combine a two-dimensional pictures with an illusory three-dimensional space. They may also have different perceptions of the picture. What an artist sees and what a non artist sees are also different.
Human Information Processing System
This is how raw data from the sense is transformed into meaningful information that we can act upon or store away for later.
Visual Perception: Where Bottom-Up Meets Top-Down
The duty pf the retina is to convert light energy to electrical impulses for the brain to interpret. The Fovea is small and allows us to distinguish small objects, detail, and color. Saccades are rapid eye movements.
Sensory Memory: Fleeting Impressions
Sensory memory is an iconic memory for visual information and en echoic memory for auditory information.
Working Memory: Mental Workspace
Working memory is where conscious mental work is performed to support cognition. We use working memory to compare to what we know and make sense of the world.
Cognitive Load: Demands on Working Memory
A cognitive overload can often lead to failure to understand information, a misinterpretation of information, and overlooking important information.
Long-Term Memory: Permanent Storage
When we selectively pay attention to information in working memory, it is likely to get transformed and encoded into long-term memory.
We remember
Facts and concepts - basic color theory
Events - remembering playing our first instrument
How to perform a task - Riding a bike
Encoding
Storing things to your long-term memory usually takes some form of conscious rehearsal or meaningful association.
Depth of processing
A memory is stored deeper when the viewer focuses on the semantic aspects.
Schemas: Mental Representations
Knowledge in long-term memory is organize in mental structures called schemas. Schemas are the context for interpreting new information and the framework for integrating new knowledge.
Retrieval
“The retrieval process is erratic, highly fallible, and heavily cue dependent.” -Bjorks
A failure to remember something is often the result of a poor retrieval cue rather than a lock of stored knowledge.
Automaticity
Over time, more complex mental operations become automated with practice. It is not uncommon for people with expertise in a field to perform a task without needing to pay deliberate attention to it.
Mental Models
Mental models explain cause and effect and how changes in one object or phenomenon can cause changes in another. Example: Graphic software users have a mental model of how layers operate.
Dual Coding: The Visual and The Verbal
Verbal and visual information are processed through separate channels. Although the systems are independent, they communicate and interact.
The Audience’s Cognitive Characteristics
An awareness of an audience’s cognitive characteristic can bring designers closer to manipulating how an image is interpreted. Motivation is an important factor in whether and audience member will have an interesting is a piece.
Informative Value
The viewer’s gaze must be directed to the most important information and it should be memorable, so that the viewer encodes the message into long-term memory.
