ABSTRACT
Although often presented as a single basis for educational visual screen design, Gestalt theory is not a single small set of visual principles uniformly applied by all designers. In fact, it appears that instructional visual design literature often deals with only a small set of Gestalt laws. In this project Gestalt literature was consulted to distil the most relevant Gestalt laws for educational visual screen design. Eleven laws were identified. They deal with balance/symmetry, continuation, closure, figure-ground, focal point, isomorphic correspondence, prägnanz, proximity, similarity, simplicity, and unity/harmony.To test the usefulness of these laws in visual screen design they were applied to the redesign of an instructional multimedia application, 'WoundCare,' designed to teach nursing students wound management. The basic text-based screens in the original WoundCare application were replaced with graphical user interface screens, that were designed according to these principles. The new screen designs were then evaluated by asking students and others to compare the designs. The viewers were also asked to rate directly the value of using the eleven Gestalt design principles in the redesign, both for improving the product's appearance and improving its value for learning.The evaluation results were overwhelmingly positive. Both the new design and the value of applying the eleven Gestalt laws to improve learning were strongly supported by the students' opinions. However, some differences in the value of applying particular Gestalt laws to the interface design were identified and this forms a useful direction for future research.
- BORING, E. G. (1942): Sensation and perception in the history of experimental psychology. New York, Appleton Centry Crofts Inc.Google Scholar
- FISHER, M., and SMITH-GRATTO, K. (1998-99): Gestalt theory: a foundation for instructional screen design. Journal of Educational Technology Systems27(4): 361-371.Google Scholar
- FULKS, M. (1997): Gestalt theory and photographic composition. http://www.apogeephoto.com/mag1- 6/mag2-3mf.shtml (Accessed 21/10/2000).Google Scholar
- FULTZ, J. (1999): Theory of Gestalt Psychology. http ://users.anderson.edu/~jfultz/gestalt.html (Accessed 21/10/2000).Google Scholar
- KOFFA, K. (1935): Principles of Gestalt Psychology. London, Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
- LAUER, D. (1979): Design Basics. New York, Holt, Reinhart and Winston.Google Scholar
- PREECE, J., ROGERS, Y., SHARP, H., BENYON, D., HOLLAND, S. and CAREY, T. (1994): Human-computer interaction (1st Ed.). Wokingham, England, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company. Google ScholarDigital Library
- ROSS, G. and TUOVINEN, J. E. (submitted): Deep vs. surface learning with multimedia in nurse education: development and evaluation of the WoundCare CD-ROM. Computers and Nursing.Google Scholar
Index Terms
- Gestalt theory in visual screen design: a new look at an old subject
Recommendations
The gestalt principles of similarity and proximity apply to both the haptic and visual grouping of elements
AUIC '07: Proceedings of the eight Australasian conference on User interface - Volume 64When designing multi-sensory displays it is necessary to consider human perceptual capabilities and understand how people find patterns and how they organise individual elements into structures and groups.
Gestalt theory, originally described in 1910, ...
Interaction gestalt and the design of aesthetic interactions
DPPI '07: Proceedings of the 2007 conference on Designing pleasurable products and interfacesAlthough there has been a drastic increase in the research of aesthetics of interaction, we still lack well-defined practical knowledge of how to design aesthetic interactions. In order to develop such knowledge, we adapt three important ways of ...
Gestalt theory, engagement and interaction
CHI EA '10: CHI '10 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing SystemsThis paper presents a design exploration research project in which principles derived from Gestalt theory were applied as a framework for guiding human-computer interaction (HCI). The analysis contained within examines how a Gestalt approach to HCI can ...
Comments