Category: vision
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Revisiting ALL UPPERCASE LETTERS vs. Upper And Lower Case
I’m sometimes surprised by which of my blog posts people get passionate about. Take, for example, my post on whether all uppercase letters are inherently harder to read than upper and lower case. I wrote the post back in 2009, yet someone posted a comment on it today, 8 years later. And last week someone…
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The Visual Cortex And Design
Did you know that here is a part of the visual cortex that is sensitive just to a tilted line? Or that some people see millions more colors than the rest of us do? On this episode of Human Tech we talk about the strange and interesting science of vision and how it affects visual…
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The Next 100 Things You Need To Know About People: #109 — People Prefer Symmetry
Take any object—a photo of a face or a drawing of a circle or a seashell—and draw a line down the middle either horizontally or vertically. If the two halves on either side of the line are identical, then the object is symmetrical. People rate symmetrical faces as more attractive. The theory is that this…
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The Neuro-Aesthetics of Hillary’s Campaign Logo
Yesterday Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy for President of the US, and before 24 hours went by I had a media request to talk about why people were reacting so strongly (in a negative way) to her logo. I’m in the middle of writing my next book (100 MORE Things Every Designer Needs to Know About…
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Red Or Blue?: Research On Screen Color That May Surprise You
How does color affect our behavior when we are doing things online? Does it make a difference what the color background is? Does it depend on what we are reading or doing? Can you affect people’s decisions and behavior by changing the background color of a particular page or screen? Research by Ravi Mehta and…
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Top 10 Things Every Presenter Needs To Know About People: #3 – Multiple Sensory Channels Compete
Imagine that you are driving while listening to the radio and talking to a passenger sitting next to you. You are processing multiple sensory channels simultaneously. You are watching (the road), listening (to the radio and your friend), and thinking and talking. This doesn’t sound too difficult. People process multiple sensory channels all the time.…
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100 Things You Should Know About People: #51 — You React To Colors Based On Your Culture
Many years ago I worked with a client who had created a color map of the different business regions for their business, showing the total revenue for the quarter for each region. Yellow was for the Eastern part of the US, green for the Central, etc. They had used red for the western states. The…
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100 Things You Should Know About People: #50 — 9 Percent Of Men And .5% Of Women Are Colorblind
The term color blindness is actually misleading. Most people who are “color blind” are not blind to all colors, but really have a color deficiency that makes it hard for them to see differences between some colors. Different types of color blindness — There are many different kinds of color blindness, but the most common…
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100 Things You Should Know About People: #49 — The Brain Looks For Simple Patterns
What do you see when you look at the x’s below? xx xx xx xx Chances are you will say you see four sets of 2 x’s each. You won’t see them as 8 separate x’s. You interpret the white space, or lack of it, as a pattern. People are great at…
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100 Things You Should Know About People: #48 — What You See Is Not What Your Brain Gets
Can you read this?: Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, the oredr of lteetrs in a wrod is nto vrey iprmoetnt. Waht mttaers is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The ohter letetrs can be a ttoal mses and you can sitll raed wthuot mcuh probelm. Tihs is bcauseae yuor…
