Gestalt psychology constitutes one of the oldest theories about how we perceive the world around us. Its central idea is that the human mind tends to integrate individual sensations and experiences to form a unified whole which is different than the sum of its parts. Understanding the gestalt principles of perceptual organization can help designers elevate their works over those of others.
A field of study under cognitive psychology today, gestalt psychology (not to be confused with gestalt therapy) was developed in Germany during the first half of the 20th century as a reaction to structuralism. It is built upon the notions that the whole is different than the sum of its parts; that we perceive whole objects, before their constituents; and that it is perceptual organization that underlies human perception. In this blog post, I’ll provide a brief introduction to gestalt psychology and its importance for designers.
Our brain creates its own reality. After all, would we be able to identify a man, in particular, Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf the Second, in this painting by Giuseppe Arcimboldo – which actually depicts a collection of vegetables and fruits – if our perception of the world were a mirror-image representation of some precise physical reality? And wouldn’t our ancestors have become extinct, if they waited to have a full view of predators lurking behind bushes and trees?
The Human Perception
The human perception is constructivist in that it can make sense of incomplete, distorted, and even contradictory sensory information. Without this ability, the world would appear to us to be an assembly of dissociated shapes and objects, completely indistinguishable from environmental noise, with the result being a chaotic manifestation.
Our brain in turn depends upon our visual sense, more than any other, to provide it a consistent representation of objects and items we interact with, even when exposed to unusual perspectives. The better the discernment of the structure of an environment, the easier it is for us to operate in it.
Designers have the difficult task of presenting viewers of their works visual information structured and arranged in a manner that will make it easy for them to discern what has been depicted, while also enjoying the aesthetics. One of the main set of tools in a designer’s toolbox to accomplish that is the compilation of principles of gestalt psychology, which, translated from German means psychology of form.
A Historical Look
A field of study under cognitive psychology today, gestalt psychology was developed in Germany during the first half of the 20th century, as an extension of, but originating as a reaction to a theory called structuralism, which tried to understand and explain the workings of the brain in terms of how simple components come together to create complex experiences. It was assumed that a better understanding of mental processes underlying human thought was possible by defining and categorizing individual constituents of the human mind and then studying their unconscious combinations.
The easiest way to comprehend this is to appreciate that the brain can make sense of a pointillist painting, where the individual dots have no meaning, except as part of the whole; and thus, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, so to speak, to state it with a cliché.
However, the founding fathers of gestalt psychology Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, and Wolfgang Köhler showed, that the structuralist approach was not sufficient to explain many optical illusions, and concluded that the whole is actually different than the sum of its parts; that we perceive whole objects, before their constituents, and that it is perceptual organization that underlies human perception. Thus, according to gestalt psychology, we should look at how cognitive processes are organized, rather than concentrating on the elements of these.
The Importance for Design
Still today, gestalt psychology is taught in schools, if at all, in conjunction with optical illusions. This obscures the importance of the field in providing design guidelines, so-called gestalt principles of perceptual organization, for using the biases and quirks that characterize human visual processing in order to achieve superior designs.
The human brain is such an amazing pattern matching machine, that it will seek and instantly detect structure, form, and organization wherever we direct our attention to, sometimes even where there is none. Such a visual system capable of instantly providing a meaningful representation of objects in our environment is of utmost importance in a world of constant change.
It allows us to rapidly scan our surroundings for elements that we require to accomplish our objectives, without dedicating time and attentional resources to irrelevant or superfluous details. When things are arranged well, we know immediately what to do.
This applies in the same way to design. Imposing a proper structure helps to frame and group information, so viewers can find what they are looking for faster; it helps to highlight and prioritize information, so viewers’ attention can be redirected as desired; and it helps to chunk and order information, so the display can be simplified, making it visually more appealing.
The Gestalt Principles
Gestalt psychology is a field of study that is actively pursued and advanced by many researchers still today. Three new principles were added to the already established nine as recently as the beginning of the 21st century.
As design is concerned, we can say that there are four concepts and twelve principles in gestalt theory. The concepts describe how the main processing capability of the brain, its pattern matching mechanism works at a deep level. They explain item perception. The concepts usually studied are Emergence, Reification, Invariance, and Multi-Stability. I will introduce these individually in a later blog post.
The gestalt principles describe scene perception and have practical applications in any field where visual design is involved. The principles that are significant for designers are: Meaningfulness, Conciseness, Good Continuation, Closure, Figure / Ground Relationship, Common Region, Connectedness, Symmetry, Proximity, Similarity, Common Fate, and Synchrony and will be introduced individually in a later blog post.
Conclusion
Gestalt psychology, which, translated from German means psychology of form, is built upon the premise that the whole is different than the sum of its parts and assumes that we perceive whole objects before their constituents, and that it is perceptual organization that underlies human perception.
Gestalt psychology can help designers to use the biases and quirks that characterize human visual processing in order to achieve superior designs, and thus to structure visual information in a manner that will make it easy for viewers to grasp what has been depicted, while also enjoying the aesthetics.
If you wish to learn in-depth how gestalt psychology can be employed for user experience, user interface, app, and web design, take the online course GESTALT THEORY FOR WEB/UX/UI/APP DESIGNERS offered by Inspiraition.com at Udemy. This course contains essential material for any designer who wishes to learn to create websites and apps that account for cognitive biases of visitors and that appeal to their subconscious minds by catering to how the human perceptual system works.
Aischa Erten’s book GESTALT IN PHOTOGRAPHY is an excellent source for learning to apply gestalt psychology in photography. You can buy the book at Amazon.