Blog Exercise: Visual Thinking Research

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Blog Exercise - Visual Perception 2 / Feature Hierarchy

This info-graphic manages its visual feature hierarchy in a way that makes it easy to understand what is being displayed. The viewers eyes are immediately drawn to the large circles above the map. This contrast in shape is the most eye-grabbing visual on the page. This is a positive thing, because the information in the circles in the main topic of the info-graphic. The eye is most likely going to move to the bottom two rectangles of information below the circles. The rectangle to the right is where the eye move next, because of the contrasting large numbers and bold typeface. The eyes tend to see color as the highest feature in the visual hierarchy, then size, then shape. There are very few visual feature channels seen present in this graphic as compared to some others, mainly because it is a static piece. The objects have strong spatial grouping, which also aids in making the visualization easy to understand.

Blog Exercise: Visual Perception 1 / Top-Down Visual Processing

This advertisement is an example of top-down visual processing. It has goal-directed eye movements built in. Your eye is directed along the swirling lines towards the text on the left. The eye is given short fixations on the swirling lines, which eventually come to focus on the skier, which is a longer fixation. The viewer then shifts over to the text, reads that, and realizes the advertisement is for Nike. The viewer then makes the connection between Nike and Skiing and sports.

Nike Advertisment, found @ http://ffffound.com/image/bcac3fa33b56931952379d3adf3e72f5a030c9b8