[IxDA Discuss] Cognitive load question

[Lisa deBettencourt]

I wrote a paper on this topic a few years ago and I put some references from
my bibliography and some relevant links at the bottom of this email.

So, bottom line, clutter decreases usability. We can say this is "common
sense" but you want to know why. Vision is a rapid parallel processor that
can recognize patterns, extract features, orientation, color, texture and
movement. It is especially adept at recognizing change. The cog sci world
says that this happens "preattentively" or prior to us mentally attending to
something. "Clutter" - or disorganization - gets in our way of finding and
recognizing patterns in a sea of data. It's a signal to noise ratio issue.
If the "noise" (poor design) is too high, we can't see any "signal"
(information). And here's a very important link between preattentive
processing and design: the Gestalt Theory and Gestalt Laws of Perceptual
Grouping (similarity, proximity, good continuation, symmetry and
periodicity). See also:
http://cns-alumni.bu.edu/~slehar/webstuff/pcave/gestalt_laws.html.

The basic premise in Gestalt Theory is that we infer relationships about and
between things when they are close to each other, have similar shapes and/or
sizes, are of like or similar color, etc. Translate that to web design and a
very simple example is: group similar items together and separate the group
from the rest of a page so users will know that the group is different from
the rest of the page. Subgroup links within the group to show similarity
between items. Use negative space to communicate different subgroups. Like a
navigation panel. A group of buttons of the same visual style close together
will be seen to have a relationship to each other or to another object they
are close to; say like the buttons below this text box I'm typing in in
gmail so I can infer that they have something to do with some actions I
perform on the email as opposed to actions I perform on my inbox.

Now, going back to the clutter topic - or the opposite - organization: a
well organized design/page/widget allows us to quickly parse it visually and
preattentively (as opposed to reading it serially) and facilitates our
ability to infer information about groups and objects (text, pictures,
buttons, links, etc.). This aids in our ability to  figure out how to make
use of the design/page/widget and learn from/about it.

I hope that helps.

~Lisa

Healey, C. G., Booth., K. S. & Enns, J. T.  (July, 1995).  Visualizing
Real-Time Multivariate Data Using Preattentive Processing.  ACM Transactions
on Modeling and Computer Simulation.  5(3), 190-221.

Crapo, A.W., Waisel, L. B., Wallace, W. A. & Willemain, T. R.  (2000).
Visualization and the Process of Modeling: a cognitive-theoretic view.
Communications of the ACM.  5(8).

Lohse, J. (1991). A Cognitive Model for the Perception and Understanding of
Graphs.  Communications of the ACM.  3(4), 137-144.

http://www.csc.ncsu.edu/faculty/healey/PP/

http://www-static.cc.gatech.edu/~jimmyd/summaries/triesman1992.html

On 6/7/06, Robert Hoekman, Jr. <rhoekmanjr at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> [Please voluntarily trim replies to include only relevant quoted
> material.]
>
> Thanks for the clarification. I knew I was somehow getting multiple
> concepts
> mixed up. I'm definitely more interested in preattentive processing.
>
> What I'm researching in particular is how clutter affects the usability of
> a
> page, in general. Any insights?
>
> -r-