Perception and the Design
Saturday, February 23rd, 2008
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.
