This post is part of the ongoing series of reading reflections on HCI papers and articles. You can find the other posts ‘here.’
The Cognitive Science of Visual-Spatial Displays: Implications for Design
Digital Object Identifier (DOI): https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1756-8765.2011.01150.x
This article reviews the cognitive principles that have been used to inform the design of visual displays. It selectively reviews literature that focuses on the principles that have been most influential in the design of visual displays. The article is organized around the following questions: What are the cognitive principles that have been used to inform the design of visual displays? How have these principles been used to inform the design of visual displays? What are the key challenges in designing visual displays?
Some of the points from the readings that I found interesting are:
- presenting too much information can be detrimental to the user, and can lead to visual clutter or distraction
- I especially found the empirical results on newspaper graphics interesting, as I always found more information/ink to be better for information’s usability, but it seems that the opposite is true
- some visual displays are perceived as more trustworthy than others, and this can be due to the way the information is presented
- e.g. geospatial data presented in realistic displays are more trusted even if it encodes data poorly
- interactivity requires much more knowledge, to extract and interpret the information in the display
- in environments with less knowledge, interactivity can burden the user with display choice and design