How visual perception affects visual design
Visual design as a field has grown out of both user interface design and graphic design. As such, it focuses on the aesthetics of a product/website and its related materials by strategically implementing images, colors, fonts, and other elements. everyone knows this, But what underlays visual design. Why is the design of a UI called as visual design? How is design related to perception?
More than visual design I would like to point out what is visual perception — Visual perception refers to the brain’s ability to make sense of what the eyes see. So no matter what design we are creating, in the end, it's all how the brain sees it and understands. The visual perception of colors, patterns, and structures have been of particular interest in relation to graphical user interfaces (GUIs) because these are perceived exclusively through vision. An understanding of visual perception, therefore, enables us to create more effective user interfaces.
Visual Stress
A design which causes visual stress to the users by cluttering the design with too many data points, unwanted design element, and unreadable text. I would like to call any design which causes visual stress to the users as cluttered design.
There are 3 main characteristics that cause a design to feel cluttered:
1. There’s simply too much content (especially text) on the screen
2. Content doesn’t seem organized in a logical way
3. There’s too much visual noise caused by striking imagery and contrasts
Cluttered designs are ones that lack visual order, thus increasing cognitive load as users struggle to parse the visual landscape and understand which parts are important.
We all have clients who mention that all the data points and content are of high importance and much needed. But is it the same from an end user? Out of all the important key points which the client mentions as important it’s up to us to break it down and understand the key important points from a user perspective and giving that data in chunks to the user, thereby reducing the visual stress. Visual stress can not only cause rapid fatigue when reading but also affects the usability by leaving the user in confusion to understand what is the design is trying to convey.
So how do you improve visual perceptual in your design
- Visual cues: It is one of the most important ways to improve visual perceptual. Using visual cues to communicate and give directions to the user, it might be something as simple as a little icon which helps the user to relate to his everyday things. It is said that visuals are processed in the brain at 60,000 times the speed of text. Brain acknowledges and remembers shapes may it be icons, images illustrations first because simple visual images can be remembered and recognized directly. Reading, instead, is a longer process than identifying shapes, because the brain needs to identify letterforms and decode words into meaning.
- Directional arrows: To help with direction as whats the next step user needs to perform. When it comes to onboarding, check-out or even a simple carousel scroll, giving the user the remaining steps he needs to complete helps to visually perceptual any design.
- Spacing and kerning: Not only having a proper spacing between 2 sentences; right spacing between characters and paragraphs are also all very important especially when it’s a context-heavy screen. Text readability is the key to any website or product. Users would not have the time to go through tons of content which are not readable.
- Highlight the line: Not all sentences are of the same importance in any given design, try highlighting the parts of the sentence which gives the user more context so that he need not go through the entire paragraph to understand it.
- Eliminate visual distractions: Never distract the user by design elements which are of no use, Avoid unnecessary decorations in design. Remove as much of visually confusing layouts as possible, especially when it’s an interactive screen where the user needs to perform actions. Encourage the user to use the application more often by giving him what is required keeping the design clear of distractions and clutter.
- Outline boundaries: Highlight elements like toasters, pop-ups with a subtle shadow just to give the depth between them. Even in input fields giving color difference for error state and warning state, helps the user to perceptual. Use contrast, design needs to separate the foreground from the background, to recognize objects that are viewed from an incredible range of spatial orientation, and to accurately interpret spatial cues.
- Break visual activities into small steps: When working on an interactive screen, present one piece at a time and hide unneeded pieces allowing the user to focus on one element at a time reducing his cognitive load.
Along with this, we have set of design principles which have to be followed to improve the Visual Perception, I would not go in detail as there are lots of resources out there. Few of the principals to name are:
The importance of aesthetics increases as the interface between the artifact and the affected people becomes more comprehensive.
Conclusion
The first implication is the recognition that aesthetics constitutes an important and integral part of any design discipline. The importance of aesthetics increases as the interface between the activities need to be performed and the affected people become more comprehensive. The second implication is that visual perception is often related to other design aspects. Thus, not only should we not worry about trading off aesthetic and other qualities of interactive systems; we should embrace visual perception as a dimension that augments other aspects of the design and the overall interactive experience.
