Chapter 1: Pre-Attentive Perception

Pre-attentive perception is the initial processing stage of visual information from the surroundings which occurs without one's conscious effort. This is an incredibly fast process, where the brain effortlessly identifies and organizes certain visual characteristics. Some pre-attentively detected attributes include color, size, shapes, position, proximity, orientation, and motion.

Designers, capable of controlling such visual properties, can help create better and easier experiences for users. By making design decisions that harness the human vision and mind's ability to observe at light speed, designers can present information in a way that immediately grabs a viewer’s attention and guides them through the experience without requiring much effort or conscious thought.

A realistic scenario where we would meet our poster is:

1.1 Peripheral vision experiment

As we navigate a world of excessive visual information daily, design is usually pre-attentively perceived through the peripheral vision. An experiment was conducted on the above poster to show how design is seen from the blurry corner of our eyes.

The poster was put on a smartphone screen, and my left arm was placed in front of me. While staring at my thumb, I moved the smartphone with my right arm from afar toward my left thumb. The results indicate that the further away a visual is from the foveal vision, the more blurry and vague it becomes.

The poster appears to be almost a blank, white image.

A blur of graphical elements can be noticed from the edge of my eyes. However, it is impossible to identify what shapes and colors those are.

The poster becomes only slightly identifiable. A haze of purple color can be detected.

It is possible to notice a pattern of black lines. The purple color intensifies. I can notice the color of human skin, but can't identify the form.

Those black lines are confirmed to be typography once the poster is held at a 15-degree angle, which is the clearest yet. At this angle, hierarchy can be roughly detected. I can identify small text at the top of the poster, an image in the middle, and much bigger text at the bottom. Moreover, I can detect two figures, one of which is a human body, perhaps a female. Colors are also more recognizable at this angle. Yellow color can now be seen, while purple has become more vibrant.

1.2 Showing some people the poster for just some milliseconds!

By showing something very briefly, we get a hold of early processing. This experiment uses a quick-viewer, the Tachistoscope, to test which elements of the poster are unconsciously recognized or memorable. The poster was shown to 6 participants for 5 milliseconds on the Tachistoscope. They were then asked to explain what they saw.

Overall, almost all participants [5 out of 6], excluding one, were able to notice “a naked woman”. This was also the first element in the poster to be noted by the 5 participants. Some of the participants [3 out of 6] were able to provide more details about the female figure, such as her back being visible, her hand being placed on a wall, and having dark skin.

Only one participant was able to notice a “male” figure. It is important to note that the other figure in the poster is wearing a full-body suit, a gas mask, and gloves. Therefore, it is very difficult to tell the gender of the figure in a few milliseconds; yet one participant did. It can be concluded that this occurred as a result of the height and build of the figure — appearing to be tall and sturdy, which is often a common way of perceiving males. The way the two figures are positioned together, in almost an embrace, adds further to such a conclusion.

The second most noticed element [with 4 out of 6 participants] is the black typography. Since the poster is filled with black text, it might be important to point out that only one participant specified which typography they were able to see. They used the words “some font below” to describe it. It can be inferred that the text below was the easiest to notice since it is the biggest, being “Daluma”, the brand name.

In regards to the backdrop, 4 participants mentioned a white background, while the other 2 participants observed the setting with a higher level of detail. One participant mentioned that the figures are “standing in a bathroom”, while another suggested that the figures are “at a lab" going through some “testing situation”. It can be said that the bathroom setting was assumed due to the white tiles in the background as well as the undressed female with wet hair. On the other hand, the lab setting might have been concluded because of the male figure’s attire [i.e. white full-body suit, gas mask, rubber gloves] and tools [i.e. container with a yellow hazard symbol and device with wire in hand].

This is what the poster probably looked like to people...

1.3 Checking with Gestalt principles

The Gestalt principles present the foundation on which the human mind perceives and assembles visual data. There are 6 Gestalt principles: good gestalt, figure-ground, proximity, closure, similarity, and continuity. These visual principles can help designers enhance their work's aesthetics and functionality, creating simpler, easier-to-grasp experiences for viewers. Looking at the poster, one can notice the following Gestalt principles: figure-ground, similarity, and proximity.

It is easy when looking at this poster to distinguish between the elements in the foreground and those in the background. The text that reads "toxic relationship" is in the foreground, being placed on top of the image. Meanwhile, the two figures in the image itself are in the foreground, while the white tiles are in the background.

The black typographic elements, regardless of their size and proximity, are visually grouped as text. They are all recognized as words that make up sentences, which are verbal messages meant to deliver further information about the poster.

Graphical elements which are close in distance are naturally interpreted as groups. For instance, the three words "leave toxic behind" are grouped together as a phrase since they are placed closely together. The brand name "Daluma" is read as one word as the letters are put tightly next to one another. Meanwhile, the "360° visionary self-care" is interpreted as a slogan for the brand name since it is laid out very closely underneath it.

1.4 What do we really look at?

To understand early processing further, an eye-tracking experiment using SensoMotoric Instruments was carried out, where participants sat in front of a screen, looked at the poster for a few seconds, and had their eye movements tracked.

The heat map results show that the most looked at element in the poster is the human face that belongs to the female. The second most looked at part is the gas mask worn by the male figure. We can conclude that the human face deeply grabs our attention due to its familiarity as well as our biological attraction to other humans. The naked female who is staring directly at us with such an intense gaze is meant to make us stare back. But what about the male whose face is entirely covered? It can be inferred that his body [given that his hand is at the forefront of the poster, which also took some attention from the participants] leads us to expect that there is a face somewhere. Perhaps we, as viewers, are constantly looking for a familiar face.

Participant 3 looked at the poster from bottom to top, starting with the large typography at the very end of the poster and moving on to the male hand with the glove at the center. Then, they looked at the female's face — particularly the eyes — followed by the gas mask and the typography at the very top of the poster. They went back again to the female’s face, looking further and longer at the eyes. Finally, they went all the way down to the typography again; this time, reading the slogan from left to right.

Participant 7, on the other hand, started at almost the center of the poster, examining the male figure with the full-body suit and the gloves, then immediately moving on to the female’s back. Their eyes never wandered to the typography or any element other than the two human figures.

Visual Analysis Research Report by Anan Mahmoud