How Your Brain Sees Design

We’ve looked for our phone when it was in our hand all along and car keys when they were right in front of us. But let’s face it, most of the time we think we pay attention to our surroundings. But do we really?

Time for a reality check. How fast can you read this?

i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The

phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigd 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 mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. And I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

This test highlights a fascinating aspect of our brains: we miss a lot evidently. We “see” things as a whole rather than seeing in the correct combination or position of its separate parts.

Let’s take this a step further.

See how fast you can read this, when letters are replaced by numbers that look similar their respective letters:

7H15 M3554G3

53RV35 7O PR0V3

H0W 0UR M1ND5 C4N

D0 4M4Z1NG 7H1NG5!

1MPR3551V3 7H1NG5!

1N 7H3 B3G1NN1NG

17 WA5 H4RD BU7 N0W,

0N 7H15 LIN3

Y0UR M1ND 1S

R34D1NG 17

4U70M471C4LLY

W17H 0U7 3V3N

7H1NK1NG 4B0U7 17.

0NLY C3R741N P30PL3

C4N R3AD 7H15.

How can we apply this to design and know that what we create is fully appreciated and understood, and how much of it is simply never seen?

Take these famous logos for example.

Do you see the arrow?

Do you see the smile?

Do you see the man on the bike?

Do you see the bear?

Our brain is adept at filling things in when they’re not there. At the position in our eyeball where our optic nerve connects to our brain, we actually can’t see at all. Our brain is continuously filling in that blind spot and because we have two eyes, we never notice it.

Color is another fascinating puzzle for our brains to figure out.

Afterimages occur when you look at a bright object and see a remnant of it a few seconds later, especially when the contrast is high, like at night.

Stare at the colored dots on the photo below for 30 seconds. Then look at a white surface and start blinking.

(Click on the image to view and enlarge until you see the red, green, and blue dots on her nose.)

Here is Ewald Hering’s explanation of how the brain sees afterimages in three pairs of primary colours. It is called opponent process theory and it means that the human visual system interprets colour by processing signals from cones and rods in an antagonistic manner. The theory suggests that there are threeopponent channels: red vs. cyan, blue vs. yellow, and black vs. white. So a green image will produce a magenta afterimage. Because the green colour tires out the green photoreceptors, they produce a weaker signal. Anything that results in less green is interpreted as its paired primary colour, magenta.