Perception and the Design
An interesting email came via my partner this morning. I couldn’t vouch for the academic integrity of its contents but the underlying message is quite interesting from a design perspective. Here’s the email.
fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too. Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can.
i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mni d deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs forwrad it.
I’m expecting many people have no difficulty reading this block of text as I couldn’t believe that I could actually understand… while others (45% according to the text) find it an extreme accessiblity barrier.
Perception is an area where designers can never be over interested. How our brains take information, process it and create outputs greatly affects the possibilities we have to interact with them as clients and product users. The world is not out there it is in there.
Khoi Vihn’s post on the Stefan Sagmeister phenomenon today also made me think a little more about the relationship between perception and design. Between who we are and what we do. About the friction between the perceptual brain and the designer’s work. You could imagine some of Sagmeister’s work as a manipulation of friction between the perceiver and the object in such a way as to ignite some level of understanding. Or maybe I’ve been living with an artist for too many years. Graphic design and art have a commonality which makes both uneasy about the lines of their definition.
Its interesting how easy it is (for many of the literate) to understand the jumbled text of the quoted email. I admit its not as easy to read because the brain has to do a lot more work internally. But writing fcuk or rethom reckuf (spell that one backwards) can have a legitimate place in design communication or branding. Factors like audience, size of the text under consideration, style, typography, situational context and the business environment all have a place in the legitimate exploitation of this perception awareness in any particular design. Anyway, its an interesting subject.
