Human brains work in really strange ways and despite the efforts to try and figure out exactly how the human mind works we have barely scratched the surface. A fascinating example of this is the field of Gestalt Psychology. Gestaltism is a school of thought which looks at the human mind and behaviour as a whole, suggesting that when we try to make sense of the world we find ourselves in, we do not focus on every tiny detail â instead our minds generalise what we experience in order to be able to process it.
It originated from M. Wertheimer who became interested in looking at the totality of the mind (a big picture if you will). His guiding principle being that âthe whole was greater than the sum of its partsâ. His psychology helped to introduce the idea that human perception is not just about seeing what is actually present in the world, but instead realising that much of what we perceive is heavily influenced by our motivations, expectations and emotions.
âThere are wholes, the behaviour of which is not determined by that of their individual elements, but where the part-processes are themselves determined by the intrinsic nature of the whole. It is the hope of Gestalt theory to determine the nature of such wholes.â
M. Wertheimer
Our brains are great at filling in missing information. An example of this is a movie: at its simplest it is a series of individual still images shown to us in a sequence, however when you show them to a person in sequential order at the right speed the brain will fill in the blanks between them and give the appearance of motion. Being aware that the brain operates in this way is a great tool to have, especially when designing applications or interfaces since we can use these mental shortcuts that our brains take to create unique interfaces and experiences for our users.
Gestaltâs observations, often referred to as Gestalt Laws, can become a surprisingly useful set of guidelines when designing user interfaces; his ideas about perception can be used to help us design more intuitive web and app interfaces, by following a few simple notions about the layout and grouping of elements we can make the interface more intuitive and easier to use. Here are some of the main ones:
Law of Closure
Humans prefer complete shapes so our brains can automatically fill in gaps between elements to perceive them as a more complete image. In the example above you canât see the triangle on the right and yet it feels like the random blobs are arranged in the shape of a triangle. The brain ignored the gaps and filled in the contour lines automatically.
Law of Similarity and Proximity
Objects which look or feel similar will be perceived as being grouped together, our brains will naturally put them together and think of them as a whole. They looks the same therefore our brain thinks they belong to the same group.
Similarly, the law of proximity applies when items which are placed close to each other appear to belong to the same group. In the example above, the black dots could have been arranged in random rows and columns, but because they are close together your brain naturally thinks that they belong to individual groups.
Law of Figure and Ground
Our brains dislike uncertainty. They naturally look for solid, stable images because they are cognitively easier on our hardware (well⊠wetware). Unless the object is ambiguous we will naturally perceive its foreground first. That is why the face and vase illusion can be so trippy to look at.