Visual Thinking Research

In this pazzle, it is required to image how the objects would like to be if it is rotated, and finding mathing objects. When I started the puzzle, I was looking at “A”, and looking for similarities with other objects. I saw it from another viewpoint and compared with other objects and imaged which objects would like to be the same object with “A”. I rotated objects in different angles in my imagination, and I figured out that “I” is the same shape with “C”. I continued the same thing until every alphabet has mathing one.

Solving this pazzle, he looked for matching objects with A first. He rotated objects in his mind, and he figured out that “B” matched with “A”. He continued to rotate objects in his mind, and he did the same thing several times, and he got six pair objects.

We basically did the same thing to figure out which object is match each other.

Solving this pazzle, I started to compare a red square and “A”, a red square and “B”, a red square and “C”, a red square and “D” and a red square and “E”. I found out that a red square and “D” has the same mathing line. I continued the same thing, and I figured out that only “D” has mathing shape with red, yellow, blue and green squares, so answer is “D”.

In this pazzle, he tried to find regularity first, but he could not find any regularity, so he saw those colorful squares indivisualy to see any secret meaning. However, he could not find any key, and he gave up.

We used different styles to solve this puzzle, but both of us got wrong answer. 

Feature Hierarchy

This image was a poster which was connected to my major graphic design. This poster is starbucks' poster for winter season. This image is composed of color and shape channel which is related to future hierarchy. On this poster, main color is light blue, and the cup of color is an opponent color which is red. The red cup really pop-out which displays color feature channel. Also, on the cup, there is a ribbon to show the flavor for each. Since the ribbons is over the cup, it stands out which displays depth. First, viewers eye will detect the color feature channel of the red cup. Next, their eye will detect the shape feature channel of the ribbon, and then the title. Because everything is light blue except the cup, the red cup really stands out in this image.Color difference is the most effective to viewers, and color feature channel effectively catch viewers' eye.

http://graphics217a.wordpress.com/2011/02/24/colors-used-in-the-starbucks-poster/

Top-Down Visual processing

I'm interested in graphic design, and this is a perfect example of Top-Down Visual Processing. This is an image of Where's Waldo book which is a very popular book for children in the world. Top-Down visual processing involves some sort of goals what we are looking for and we want to achieve. This book of purpose is to find Waldo from each page. Waldo dresses in a red and white striped shirt, blue jeans, a snow hat and round glasses, so viewers look for the person who wears these. However, there are people who wear similar cloths with Waldo in this image, and also there are many objects that use red and white striped patter to get viewers attentions. Therefore, viewers start to scan all over the image to find him even small parts of the image, so their eye movements go right to left, and up to bottom . Also, they sometimes forget which area they already scanned, so they probably rescan the same area until they find Waldo. After they scanned all over the image and found Waldo, they completed the task of the image. This is a good example of Top-Down visual processing.

http://www.findwaldo.com/fankit/graphics/#1

Design Success and Failure / Syntactical Guidelines

This is an example of a success record jacket. One of reasons is balance. The artist stands vertically, and the name of the artist and the album is written horizontally. Those vertical and horizontal lines makes the image well-balanced. Also, the lady stands on the right side, and the writing is written on the left side, and it also makes the image well-balanced. Well-balanced image is an eye-catching design for users; therefore, more users look at the record jacket than unbalanced images. Another reason is attraction and grouping. On the left side, there are information of the artist and the title of album. They are the same font and size, and they are close to each other, so they are grouping. However, only the artist name is showed in a different color, and it is an eye-grabbing point. This is an attraction. Therefore, users are able to recognize whose record jacket it is, and they can find her CD easily. 

This is an example of a failed record jacket. One reason is that the image is unbalanced. The title of the album, Party Queen, and the artist name, Ayumi Hamasaki, are not the same angle. Also, the lady stands vertically, and there are more lines of the dest, chair and footer which are variety of angles. Those lines do not give a sense of the balance and unity, and the record jacket is not atrractive. As the result, this record jacket does not catch users eyes. One more another reason is that this image does not have any stress. The both of the title and artist name are colorful and standout, and also the picture itself has many information which is standout. As the result, they are glaring weakness, and it looks just unorganized image. Also, since there are many information on this image, there are no appealing point which is a stress. In the result, users cannot find the most important information of the record jacket and fail to find the album.