Tag: John LeMasney

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9 of 365: Attractiveness bias #design #principle

9 of 365 - attractiveness bias design principle by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
9 of 365 - attractiveness bias design principle by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
9 of 365 - attractiveness bias design principle by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
9 of 365 – attractiveness bias design principle by John LeMasney via lemasney.com

Attractiveness bias is a design principle that allows designers to act upon noted preferences in humans for (typically) other humans who seem to be whole, symmetrical, appear genetically and otherwise healthy, and nutritionally sound. A commonly cited example for attractiveness bias is the televised debate between Nixon and Kennedy, where people who saw the debate said overwhelmingly that Kennedy won the debate, and those who only listened to the debate felt generally that Nixon won the debate. The difference can be explained in the differences in their appearances, where Kennedy is said to have looked younger, stronger, more healthy, more attractive, and more steady than Nixon in the debate.

In my illustration here, I decided to take an attractive image of a female and alter her feature symmetry and skin tone to make her less attractive, and thus less preferred.

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The design principle of area alignment

8 of 365 - Area alignment design principle by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
8 of 365 - Area alignment design principle by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
8 of 365 - Area alignment design principle by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
Area alignment design principle cc-by lemasney.com

The design principle of area alignment says that when you have a series of objects to be aligned that do not have regular shapes, that it is more aesthetically pleasing to centrally align them according to their area and weight than by central alignment of the bounding boxes.

In the illustration I’ve made here, the birds to the left are centrally aligned according to the centers of the bounding boxes, and the birds to the right are centrally aligned according to their area, form, and weight. The area aligned images are more pleasing as a series of aligned objects. These are two different ways of thinking about layout of related objects in a design plane.

“Alignment based on the area of elements versus the edges of elements.  With the advent of professional design and engineering software, elements in a design can be aligned with exacting precision. However, the alignment supported by software is based on the edges of elements — including center alignment, which calculates a center based on the edges. This method works well when elements are relatively uniform and symmetrical, but less well when the elements are nonuniform and asymmetrical. In these latter cases, it is preferable to align based on the visual weight or area of the elements, a technique that must be performed using the designer’s eye and judgment. Using edge alignment when area alignment is called for is one of the …” found in Area Alignment – Universal Principles of Design, Revised and Updated: 125 Ways to Enhance Usability, Influence Perception, Increase Appeal, Make Better Design Decisions, and Teach through Design [Book] at https://goo.gl/exykFB

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6 of 365: Anthropomorphic #design #principle

6 of 365 - anthropomorphic design principle by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
6 of 365 - anthropomorphic design principle by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
6 of 365 - anthropomorphic design principle by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
6 of 365 – anthropomorphic design principle by John LeMasney via lemasney.com

Anthropomorphic design is a method by which a designer makes use of angles and curves that are inspired by the human form to evoke certain emotional responses from the user of the design. For example, the classic Coca Cola bottle makes use of anthropomorphic design and reminds the user of the curves of the female body. One might also play with the proportions and silhouette of a form to remind the user of babies or men to evoke reasonable emotional responses to those ends. Designs that have content that is aggressive, safe, loving, stable, or kind might make use of anthropomorphic forms to evoke those responses in a subconscious way.

In this illustration, I decided to start with 4 female silhouettes, using half of each to create a form that repeats and reverses the half. Then, I created a container inspired by the result of the silhouette experiment. There is no clear connection between the end results and their inspirations, but each of them has a character to them that speaks to the original forms.

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4 of 365: Affordance #design #principle

4 of 365 - affordance - place setting by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
4 of 365 - affordance - place setting by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
4 of 365 - affordance - place setting by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
4 of 365 – affordance – place setting by John LeMasney via lemasney.com

Affordance is the design principle in which a designer considers the ease with which the user can make use of the design, in comparison to other solutions. A design with high affordance is valued because it makes more logical sense than other solutions. It allows for more understanding, and less misunderstanding. An example is a door with a handle on one side and a push plate on the other, in which the suggestion to pull is clear from one side and the suggestion to push is clear from the other. Another example is that both a round wheel and a square wheel will roll, but one clearly makes easier work of rolling. Good design that incorporates affordance considers the clarity and ease with which a task is done.

I recently attended a lovely lunch with a friend, and it seemed as though there was no design to the layout of the table, that anything could go anywhere. In learning about affordance, I thought that designing a placemat in which places were predetermined for the various dishes, drinks, and accoutrement would have been helpful. Since there is a shared central dish in the design, all of the places would be connected by it. The design could work in a round table, a long table, or a square table. By suggesting actions, the design considers affordance. In the same way that you can push on a handled door, you could place dishes anywhere on this place setting, but the most sensible action suggested by the design brings ease and order. This placemat would be reversible, in the event that a left handed person was seated.

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3 of 365: Aesthetic Usability Effect #design #principle

3 of 365 - aesthetic usability effect by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
3 of 365 - aesthetic usability effect by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
3 of 365 - aesthetic usability effect by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
3 of 365 – aesthetic usability effect by John LeMasney via lemasney.com

The Aesthetic Usability Effect is a design principle and theory that says that a design that is more aesthetic (e.g. attractive, visually appealing) is more likely to be used, chosen, or be interpreted as better. Aesthetic designs are also more likely to be perceived as easier to use that less aesthetic designs, even if that is not actually the case.

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2 of 365: Expository and Comparative Advance Organizers

2 of 365 - advance organizer on serif vs sans serif by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
2 of 365 - advance organizer on serif vs sans serif by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
2 of 365 - advance organizer on serif vs sans serif by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
2 of 365 – advance organizer on serif vs sans serif by John LeMasney via lemasney.com

Advance Organizers are a design method where an audience is given new information in one of two ways to become oriented with a new concept. In cases where the audience is newly introduced to the topic, we might use an expository advance organizer. If an alien was trying to learn about the way that a human hand functions, for instance, we might use an expository advance organizer in the form of a description of the look, feel, uses, and functions of the hand. If the alien had hand like appendages, let’s say 3-pointed claws, we might use their understanding of that in the form of a comparative advance organizer that showed the similarities and differences between the alien claw and the human hand. The purpose of either would be to grant the audience a better understanding of the new concept before going into deeper detail, training, or demonstration.

Above is an illustration of the comparative visual anatomy of serif typography and sans-serif typography, in which the letter A is used in a comparative advance organizational method, since you, the audience, is likely familiar with the letter A.