[Sigia-l] Functional Decoration: visual cues for wayfinding

[Jonathan Baker-Bates]

On 8 March 2013 17:02, Paola Kathuria <paola at limov.com> wrote:

<snip>

>
> I'd argue that colour is recognised first. On a frequently-visited site, I
> think that the actual text of a menu label becomes less and less important
> as other visual cues are quicker.
>

There's a fair amount of research and literature on this (and related
issues) in the field of gestalt theory:

http://www.usask.ca/education/coursework/skaalid/theory/gestalt/gestalt.htm

For example, the theory (which also has a lot to do with neuroscience and
the study of cognition) has "principles of the organization of perception":

Proximity
Similarity
Enclosure and Closure
Continuity
Connection

Of particular interest to you might also be the neuroscientific idea of
"preattention", which is the phenomenon of humans and animals "noticing"
gestlat elements before "thinking" about them. Stephen Few and Edward Tufte
base a lot of their approach around this kind of thing. So according to
this, I think label text (which requires "attention" to decode the text)
would be noticed last after things like colour, position or size on your
list.

A quick Google brings up this essay, which might also provide some ideas
for you:

http://www.worldchanges.com/essays/Gestalt_Principles.pdf

Jonathan

PS: I do like your phrase "functional decoration" - I think I'll steal that
one!