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

[Paola Kathuria]

[Note: the second half of this message is about the nature of expertise.]

On 9 Mar 2013, at 09:48, Jonathan Baker-Bates <jonathan at bakerbates.com> wrote:
> On 8 March 2013 17:02, Paola Kathuria <paola at limov.com> wrote:
> 
>> 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.

Thanks for the pointers, Jonathan.

Part of the reason behind writing was that, I did my psychology degree so long
ago that I can't remember why I know certain things.

> 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.

Pre-attentive processing looks to be the most relevant. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-attentive_processing

I'm effectively asking about salience (I'd forgotten that term!).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salience_%28neuroscience%29

This looks like a great paper:
"Computational Visual Attention Systems and their Cognitive Foundation: A Survey, ACM Transactions on Applied Perception (TAP)", Vol. 7, Issue 1, 2010 by Simone Frintrop, Erich Rome and Henrik I. Christensen
http://www.iai.uni-bonn.de/~frintrop/paper/frintrop_etal_tap2010.pdf

The most common features are suggested to be: intensity, colour and orientation (due
to how the eye works).

I shall have to poke around a bit more. I'll then blog about the role of
salience in Functional Decoration. Sounds sexy, huh?

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

Thanks. I think it's a good phrase. I've been using it for a long while (*tappity-tap*
Oh, twice previously on this list in 2007)

EVIDENCE vs. OPINION

In a related issue, you (JBB) might be amused to know that the issue of opinion
vs. research came up in feedback at that interview. All candidates were good and
so the things that separated them were fairly minor. The feedback I got was that,
having described functional decoration as my approach for web sites, I didn't
back it up with any research and so could be construed as (just) my opinion.
I am now retrospectively looking for supporting evidence.

Although I respect that the interviewers felt I needed to justify my design
approach by quoting an expert, I am wondering, why doesn't my opinion matter;
when does an opinion become an *expert* opinion? Do I need to have been on the
conference circuit, have a popular design blog or published a book before I can
be considered an expert?

I'd be interested to know whether other IAs (and UXs) are asked to justify
their designs by quoting an(other) expert or research, whether IAs are seen as
being experts in their fields at their work and what that expertise means,
on a practical level?

Do you have to justify every decision or are you expected to be an expert about
certain things and just know (because of everything you've read, done, experienced)?

Finally, what will it mean if any research supporting the proposed order of
salience for Functional Decoration happened AFTER I first put the idea into
practice? :-)

Thanks,


Paola
--
http://www.paolability.com/