Gestalt Principles of Visual Perception
“The purpose of visualization is insight, not pictures.”
— Ben Shneiderman
Many scientific fields have contributed to our understanding of visual perception, but none has revealed more about visual design than the Gestalt School of Psychology. These principles demonstrate that we have a proclivity for grouping objects in specific ways. Many of these conclusions are related to our interest in table and graph design, as well as the general design of reports containing them. The Gestalt principles include the following:
- Principle of Proximity
- Principle of Similarity
- Principle of Enclosure
- Principle of Closure
- Principle of Continuity
- Principle of Connection
let's dive deep into each of these ……..
Principle of Proximity
Objects that are close together are perceived as belonging to a group. Because of the way the 10 circles are spatially organized in the following illustration, we naturally interpret them as three groups:
Principle of Similarity
Objects that are similar in color, size, shape, or orientation tend to be grouped together. This idea emphasizes what we’ve already learned about how to express category groupings using color (both hue and intensity), size, form, and orientation. When these attributes are used to encode a distinction between different sets of data in a graph, they perform well as long as the number of distinctions is kept to a minimum and the attributes are dissimilar enough from one another that the groups can be easily distinguished. Some examples are below.
Principle of Enclosure
When items are surrounded in a way that looks to create a boundary around them, we perceive them as belonging together (e.g., a border or common field of color). They appear to be separated from the rest of what we view in a unique location. Take note of how your eyes are drawn to group the enclosed objects below.
Principle of Closure
When confronted with objects that can be regarded as open, unfinished, and unusual forms on the one hand, and closed, whole, and regular forms on the other, we will naturally perceive them as the latter. When there is a reasonable method to understand the open structures as closed, complete, and regular, we perceive them as such, according to the concept of closure. Here’s an example of this principle in action:
Principle of Continuity
If things are aligned with one another or appear to form a continuation of one another, we regard them as belonging together, as part of a single whole. In the left-hand illustration below, we see the various visual objects forming a simple image of a rectangle and a wavy line. If we separated the two objects, we assume they would look like those in the middle illustration. We don’t see a rectangle and three curved lines, like those in the right-hand illustration even though this is another possible interpretation of the image. Our tendency is to see the shapes as continuous to the greatest degree possible.
Principle of Connection
Objects that are related (e.g., by a line) are perceived as belonging to the same group. Even though the circles in the image below are evenly spaced, the lines that link them give the impression of two vertically joined pairs.
Gestalt principles are an important set of ideas for any designer to grasp, and their application can substantially improve a design’s beauty, functionality, and usability.
References:
- FEW, S. (2012). Show me the numbers: designing tables and graphs to enlighten.
- https://www.ifpug.org/content/conferences/isma02/IFPUG2007-08-Few-Show_Me_the_Numbers.pdf
