Visual Thinking for Design
for Design
Published on 9. April 2008
Book
Paperback/Softback
208 pages
978-0-12-370896-0 (ISBN)
Description
Visual Thinking brings the science of perception to the art of design. Designers increasingly need to present information in ways that aid their audience's thinking process. Fortunately, results from the relatively new science of human visual perception provide valuable guidance.
In this book, Colin Ware takes what we now know about perception, cognition, and attention and transforms it into concrete advice that designers can directly apply. He demonstrates how designs can be considered as tools for cognition - extensions of the viewer's brain in much the same way that a hammer is an extension of the user's hand. The book includes hundreds of examples, many in the form of integrated text and full-color diagrams.
Experienced professional designers and students alike will learn how to maximize the power of the information tools they design for the people who use them.
In this book, Colin Ware takes what we now know about perception, cognition, and attention and transforms it into concrete advice that designers can directly apply. He demonstrates how designs can be considered as tools for cognition - extensions of the viewer's brain in much the same way that a hammer is an extension of the user's hand. The book includes hundreds of examples, many in the form of integrated text and full-color diagrams.
Experienced professional designers and students alike will learn how to maximize the power of the information tools they design for the people who use them.
Reviews / Votes
"Through a detailed analysis of the mechanics of visual cognition, this book teaches us how to see as designers, by anticipating how others will see our designs. Ware summarizes the thread of inquiry that leads through Goethe, Klee, Arnheim, Gibson and Tufte, sifting it for relevance to the artful science of visualization, and condensing it into one eminently readable volume.? -Fritz Drury, Professor of Illustration, Rhode Island School of Design"All the clanking gears are here: variable resolution image detection, eye movements, environmental information statistics, bottom-up/top-down control structures, working memory, the nexus of meaning, and specialized brain areas and pathways. By the time he's done, Ware has reconstructed cognitive psychology, perception, information visualization, and design into an integrated modern form. This book is scary good.? --Stuart Card, Senior Research Fellow, and manager of the User Interface Research group at the Palo Alto Research Center
"In this fascinating new book, seasoned professionals, educators and students alike will find that Colin Ware has written an incredibly accessible text that translates years of scientific research into concrete design applications. In a clear and effective manner, Ware provides a comprehensive introduction to the interrelationships among the physiological and cognitive components through which humans process and understand the visual world. This scientific perspective for graphic design provides an additional dimension for discussing the reasoning behind design choices while remaining adaptable to the shifting contexts in which these choices occur." --Paul Catanese, Assistant Professor of New Media, San Francisco State University
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
San Francisco
United States
Publishing group
Elsevier Science & Technology
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Designers of all kinds, including professionals and students in information design, industrial design, interaction design, web design, and users of information visualization, who need practical guidance in visual and cognitive science in order to excel at their jobs-or future jobs.
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 191 mm
Weight
550 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-12-370896-0 (9780123708960)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
New editions
Colin Ware
Visual Thinking for Information Design
Book
08/2021
2nd Edition
Morgan Kaufmann
€71.00
Shipment within 10-15 days
Additional editions
Person
Colin Ware is the world's leading authority on the perceptual principles underlying the effective design of information displays. He combines interests in both basic and applied visualization research and he has advanced degrees in both computer science (MMath, Waterloo) and in the psychology of perception (PhD,Toronto). He has published over 160 articles in scientific and technical journals and at leading conferences. Many of these articles relate to the use of color, texture, motion and 3D displays in information visualization. His approach is always to combine theory with practice and his publications range from rigorously scientific contributions to the Journal of Physiology and Vision Research to applications oriented articles in ACM Transactions on Graphics and ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction. Fledermaus, the leading visualization software used in oceanography, originated in software developed by him and his graduate students.
Content
VISUAL QUERIES WHAT WE CAN EASILY SEE STRUCTURING TWO DIMENSIONAL SPACE COLOR GETTING THE INFORMATION: VISUAL SPACE AND TIME VISUAL OBJECTS, WORDS, AND MEANING VISUAL AND VERBAL NARRATIVE CREATIVE META SEEING THE DANCE OF MEANING