Preattentive visual property

Pre-attentive visual properties of objects are processed in our brain before we can consciously think about them. This usually happens in under 500ms, often in ~200ms.

Processing these properties so quickly helps us recognize patterns very fast and understand things without making conscious effort. This is also because Vision is the dominant sense

Designers need to be aware of pre-attentive visual properties to use them purposefully. These properties can be used to make something stand out or to help people recognize patterns.

There are 4 kinds of these properties:

• Color
• Form
• Movement (flicker and motion)
• Position in space

Form includes:

• Collinearity
• Curvature
• Length, breadth and width
• Marks added to objects
• Numerosity
• Shape
• Size
• Spatial grouping
• Spatial orientation

There's a nice table of different visual properties with suggestion on their best type of use: https://poetpainter.com/visual-encodings.pdf

Tags: understanding Gestalt theory in design visual design

ID: 2021-0223-0820

References:

• 'Preattentive Visual Properties and How to Use Them in Information Visualization' by Integration Design
• Colin Ware. Information Visualization: Perception for Design. Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco, CA, 2nd edition, 2004.
• https://poetpainter.com/visual-encodings.pdf