Design For The Human Mind
From the category archives:
We humans are at the mercy of a phenomenon called the split-attention effect. Many conventional information graphics, animations, visualizations and multimedia presentations demand that viewers simultaneously split their attention between divergent sources of information.
Visual communication is a tricky endeavor, because it involves a language that is only partially understood as well as mysterious and complex brain processes. We have a lot of ideas about how visual communication works, but some are assumptions based on intuition, misinformation or lack of it. Here are a few.
Information graphics give us new ways to understand and think about information. They include a huge category of visuals that are capable of communicating in diverse ways through charts, maps, diagrams, data visualizations and technical, instructional and scientific explanations. It seems that infographics become more valuable as our need to understand a complex world increases.
Experts say that a person’s behavior on the web is highly goal-driven. People have things they want to accomplish, whether it’s making a purchase, finding a recipe or learning how to do something new. Inherent in many web page designs, therefore, is information to help a user perform an action.
Lines are a versatile element of visual language. They communicate a wide variety of meanings, which are highly dependent on the context in which they appear and the characteristics of the line.
Ever since PowerPoint created the slide title area holding one line of text, presenters never looked back. It made sense, right?
Do your graphics, websites and presentations need more clarity and impact? When you know how people understand graphics, yours will be more effective. That's why I wrote Visual Language For Designers: Principles For Creating Graphics That People Understand. This site is an extension of the book. Hope you enjoy it!---Connie Malamed
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