Gestalt Principles: A Pragmatic Aspect of Data Visualisation
Data Visualisation is not just about making good-looking and understandable charts by transforming data. Data visualisation requires the task of acquiring foundational knowledge also. Understanding why some techniques of data visualisation are better than others has some psychological roots as the human brain responds to different visual information. Gestalt Principles consists of several principles which describe this.
Gestalt means “unified whole” in English and generally linked with the idea that the whole is greater than its parts. It refers to the patterns that we human perceive when presented with a few graphical elements.
People especially, designers and data viz. creators understand the gestalt principles and develop the visuals based on these Gestalt Principles making them powerful and effective in communicating information.
There are 7 Gestalt Principles- Proximity, Similarity, Continuity, Closure, Connection, Figure-Ground and Enclosure.
1. Proximity
Proximity is based on the way the objects are positioned with respect to each other as a user subconsciously move their eyes around based on the positions. When the objects are placed near to each other, the human brain assumes that they are in the same group because they are close to each other and apart from the other groups. This is the simplest way to link data which have to be seen together in a group by separating them with white spaces.
In the dashboard, the visuals which are placed together encourages users to think that the visuals are in the same context.
2. Similarity
The tendency of the human brain to group things according to the same colour, size, shape and orientation is also a part of Gestalt Principles. This principle refers to as Similarity.
While creating a data viz if we keep the features of the objects same then it makes someone understand that those items represent a group. The principle of similarity can be applied to the object even when the objects reside at separate locations on a dashboard.
3. Closure
Human eyes tend to add the missing parts of a familiar shape. When we catch sight of the ambiguous object that seems to be incomplete, irregular or an unusual form, we naturally perceive it as a whole or closed. This principle is referred to as closure.
We can apply this principle in perceiving whole structures in dashboards, especially in the design of graphs. We can easily understand this by referring below example.
4. Figure-Ground
The principle of figure-ground works on the concept of how people can look at a picture differently. They can see the figure(foreground) or the ground(background) of the image stand out. This is based on visual perception. This principle examines how the eye can separate shapes in a picture from the background of that picture.
The classical example of this is the image of Rubin Vase shown below also known as Rubin face or the Figure-Ground Vase.
5. Enclosure
The Enclosure is surrounding a group of objects by anything that forms a visual border around them such as a line, a box, or a common field of colour. It causes the objects to appear to be set apart in a region that is distinct from the rest objects.
This principle can be easily exhibited in the dashboards by the use of borders and fill colours or shading in tables, etc. We should aware that it does not require a strong enclosure, a light enclosure can create a strong perception of grouping.
6. Continuity
The principle of continuity is based on that if the eye begins to follow something, it will continue to travel in that direction until it encounters another thing. It is quite similar to the principle of closure but besides the visual connection of creating shape, we also attack visual direction as a part of continuation.
In a dashboard, the objects that are aligned with one another appear to belong to the same group. We can infer the groupings without the need for vertical grid lines to delineate them, the distinct alignment itself makes it easy to distinguish easily.
7. Connection
The principle of Connection is one of the strongest Gestalt principles concerned with the grouping of objects. It is strongest because there is direct connectivity visually.
It refers to the fact that the objects that are connected by visual properties(maybe a line or something) are perceived as being more related than objects that are not connected. This principle is especially useful for connecting together the non-quantitative data, to represent the relationships.
Conclusion
Gestalt Principles are very important to understand for good data visualisation. They set up the foundation of everything we create visually. These principles explain how humans perceive these visuals and their individual aspects not only this but these principles help us in having a better understanding of the relationships of these objects and shapes.
As we have seen how powerful they are and when they are applied correctly and logically we can deliver right and intended information to the audience.
