Design Theory: Our Perception is Biased
After reading “Designing with the Mind in Mind: Simple Guide to Understanding Interface Design Rules” by Jeff Johnson, I learned a multitude of different ways that the way we perceive the world and experiences is biased. This book also teaches us how to use these perception types to our advantage when creating a product.
I focused on Chapter 1 (Our Perception is Biased) which taught me how perception bias can be broken down into three categories that the book calls the “Past, Present, and Future.” As the book states, the “Past” can be best described as perception bias based on experiences. This can be broken into four subcategories: Perceptual Priming, Perceptual Pattern Framing, Habituation, and Attentional Blink. The “Present” can be described as perception bias based on current context and situations. The “Future” can be described as perception bias based on future goals.
Crazy 8's
As an exercise in an attempt to understand these concepts further and create a prototype that represents this chapter, I decided to illustrate 8 different ideas to find a solution. I made sure to represent each of the four types in my illustrations, but one of them gave me the most inspiration.
- Perceptual Patterns based on content
- Perceptual Patterns based on environment
- Perceptual Priming — Bird in a tree or a Camel
- Perceptual Priming — Origami or Airplane
- Desensitization through Habituation
- Example of Habituation — Closing multiple advertisements
- Contextual Perception Bias — Two people or a Chalice
- Goal-Oriented Bias — Did you notice the Pentagon
Creating a Prototype
I enjoyed each of my illustrations, but I felt like there wasn’t anything jumping out at me to make a prototype as I reviewed them. That was until I looked at the only example that did not include an illustration. Using the concept of advertisements narrowed down my options tremendously. I ended up deciding to create an infographic to quickly explain while giving an example of Habituation.
I decided on an infographic because I felt like this was the most accurate way to demonstrate Habituation. The style of this infographic was intended to be distracting and overloading to the point that you experience desensitization to further the audience’s understanding. I decided to run with this infographic because it is very quick, like an advertisement, while also providing information into this process.
For the prototype, I used a program called Adobe Illustrator because it allows you to create graphics and images. I chose to create two examples, one demonstrating overwhelming notifications, while the other represents an overload of advertisements. I wanted to weigh heavily on the fact that we actually miss out on information if we are overloaded.
Testing
Once my prototype was developed, I needed to create a survey (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf5L_bTErCLT_iTD6ve2Zcuuqws6CPdMdYEozTgFhx40krbQg/viewform) in order to document the audience’s responses, and how I could further improve it. Three individuals were tested, and the responses were recorded.
One surveyee was a 44-year-old woman, another was a 19-year-old man, and the third was a 65-year-old woman. The responses informed me that the prototype was a success. Each member that participated in the survey said that they fully understood what Habituation was, and that this infographic was done well and with accurate information. The most helpful advice I got was to make the background a little bit more lively.
Studying how these concepts function gave me a greater understanding of how to apply these design principles to projects. The overall process was stressful at times, but once I began the Crazy 8 exercise, it became much easier and it was worth the struggle. It was extremely helpful to go through this process because it gave me insight into how companies use this in their products.
