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Reflection on the class - This was a really interesting class going through prototyping and design systems, as lots of things that designers do and how they use software we have not been taught as we had to learn how to use Figma ourselves so therefore have missed out on key tools.

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Gestalt Principles

They are principles/laws of human perception that describe how humans grip similar elements and recognize patterns, that simplify complex images when we are perceiving them. As designers, we then use these principles to help organise content so that it's aesthetically pleasing and easy to understand. They come from German psychologists Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, and Wolfgang Kohler in the 1920s, they aimed to understand how people make sense of confusing and overwhelming things.

  1. Emergence- instead of understanding every small thing we are able to quickly categorise and understand what it is.

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  2. Closure - we prefer complete shapes so automatically fill gaps between them to create a whole picture.

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  3. Common region - items that are closer together we region them as one group and associate them as the same.

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  4. Continuity - we perceive things as a continuous path as we track lines and curves and don't separate them.

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  5. Proximity - items that are closer together will be sectioned as one.

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  6. Multistability - when images are ambiguous or present to interpretations we can switch between them, but can't see more than one at the same time.

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  7. Figure / ground - we look for stable and solid items unless the image is ambiguous we will then see the foreground first but contrast will affect this.

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  8. Invarience - how we perceive basic shapes even if there are various transformations like rotation, movement, size, stretching, and letting.

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  9. Pragnanz- the ability to simplify complex things to help us process quicker.

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  10. Similarity- when I'm the Mueller characteristics we then perceive them as grouped items.

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  11. Symmetry and order - humans tend to see visual elements as grouped if they are arranged symmetrically an example of that is grid systems where they are evenly divided in a space

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  12. Common fate - we perceive things moving the same direction or in unison as a group and visuals may not be moving to convey motion.

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https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/gestalt-principles#:~:text=There are six commonly recognized,(also known as prägnanz).

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Reflection on my research - Humans are simple creatures that will break visuals down into understandable chunks and this can be done through many ways like these principles which create the association through our own perception. I find it interesting that our are brains trying to find workarounds for any manipulation that has been done to a visual.

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