Visual Thinking for Information Design

✍ Scribed by Colin Ware

• Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann
• Year: 2021
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 223
• Edition: 2
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Visual Thinking for Information Design, Second Edition brings the science of perception to the art of design. The book takes what we now know about perception, cognition and attention and transforms it into concrete advice that students and designers can directly apply. It demonstrates how designs can be considered as tools for cognition and extensions of the viewer’s brain in much the same way that a hammer is an extension of the user’s hand. The book includes hundreds of examples, many in the form of integrated text and full-color diagrams.

Renamed from the first edition, Visual Thinking for Design, to more accurately reflect its focus on infographics, this timely revision has been updated throughout and includes more content on pattern perception, the addition of new material illustrating color assimilation, and a new chapter devoted to communicating ideas through images.

✦ Table of Contents

Visual Thinking
For Information Design
Copyright
Contents
Preface
1
Visual Queries
The Apparatus and Process of Seeing
The Act of Perception
Bottom-Up
Top-Down
Implications for Design
Nested Loops
Distributed Cognition
Conclusion
2
What We Can Easily See
The Machinery of Low-level Feature Analysis
What And Where Pathways
Eye Movement Planning
What Stands Out = What We Can Bias For
Lessons For Design
Motion
Visual Search Strategies and Skills
The Detection Field
The Visual Search Process
Using Multiscale Structure to Design for Search
Conclusion
3
Structuring Two-Dimensional Space
2.5D Space
The Pattern-Processing Machinery
The Binding Problem: Features to Contours
The Generalized Contour
Texture regions
Interference and selective tuning
Patterns, Channels, and Attention
Intermediate Patterns
Pattern Learning
Serial Processing
Visual pattern queries and the apprehendable chunk
Multi-Chunk Queries
Spatial layout
Horizontal And Vertical
Pattern for design
Semantic Pattern Mappings
Examples of pattern queries With common graphical artifacts
4
Color
The color-processing machinery
Opponent Process Theory
Channel Properties
Principles for design
Showing Detail
Color-coding information
Large And Small Areas
Emphasis and Highlighting
Color sequences
Color on shaded surfaces
Semantics of color
Conclusion
5
Getting the Information: Visual Space and Time
Depth Perception and Cue Theory
Stereoscopic Depth
Structure From Motion
2.5D design
How Much of the Third Dimension?
Affordances
The Where Pathway
Artificial interactive spaces
Space Traversal and Cognitive Costs
Conclusion
6
Visual Objects, Words, and Meaning
The inferotemporal cortex and the what channel
Generalized views from patterns
Structured objects
Gist and scene perception
Visual and Verbal working memory
Verbal Working Memory
Control of the Attention and the Cognitive Process
Getting into Visual Working Memory
Thinking in Action: Receiving a Cup of Coffee
Elaborations and implications for design
Make Objects Easy To Identify
Novelty
Images as symbols
Meaning and Emotion
Imagery and desire
Conclusion
7
Visual and Verbal Narrative
Visual thinking versus language-based thinking
Learned Symbols
Grammar and Logic
Comparing and contrasting the verbal and written modes
Linking Words and Images Through DEIXIS
PowerPoint Presentations and Pointing
Mirror Neurons: Copycat Cells
Visual Narrative: Capturing the Cognitive Thread
Q&A Patterns
Visual Framing
Finsts and Divided Attention
Shot Transitions
Cartoons and Narrative Diagrams
Mixed Mode Visualization Narratives
Single-Frame Narratives
Conclusion
8
Building Mental Models: Why We Present with Visualizations
Episodic Memory
Long-Term Memory
Priming
Predictive Cognition and Presentations
Analyzing Seaweed and Building Mental Models
Photographs
Cartoons to Support Mental Model Building
Mechanical Models Using Animation
Charts and Graphs
Narrative Assembly Diagrams
Combining Figurative and Non-Figurative Elements
Visualizations to Advertise
Maps, Plans, and Mental Models with Space and Time
Narrative Tension and Plot Development
9
Creative Meta-seeing
Mental Imagery
The Magic of the Scribble
Diagrams are ideas made concrete
Requirements and Early Design
Visual Task Analysis
The Creative Design Loop
Cognitive Economics Of Design Sketching
The Perceptual Critique
Meta-Seeing With Design Prototypes
Visual Skill Development
Conclusion
10
The Dance of Meaning
Review
Implications
Design to Support Pattern Finding
Optimizing the Cognitive Process
Learning and the Economics of Cognition
Designing for Mental Models
What’s Next?
Index

✦ Subjects

visual thinking; information design; perception; cognition;