Next week, a new graduate program led by the School of Visual Design at Universidad de Caldas, Colombia will be launched. The PhD in Design and Creation is first of its kind in Colombia and is strengthening the leading and high-quality position of the School at National and Latin America level. The program offers unique educational context that includes two design research groups (DICOVI and Design Aesthetics), the only Colombian-indexed design Journal named Kepes, the annual International Image Festival, the Virtual Environments Lab (Medialab Manizales), and the Image Documentation Center (Imagoteca).

If you ask a designer which part of this visual information has the highest visual hierarchy, probably he or she would say that the number “51″ and text “Monday through Friday”. According to visual hierarchy design principle size, contrast and position define the order of visualization. However, designers always see through designers’ glasses; real world interactions are different. In a brochure with 3 tables like this above (Monday-Friday, Saturday and Sunday) I have asked people to find Saturday schedule and write down a departure time to arrive at 2pm to a destination.  Most of them focus on time tables and have written Monday-Friday time and then they realize later of the mistake correcting the answer. Some people even realize the mistake.

This means that a given goal changes the visual hierarchy principle. This issue leads me to think that visual hierarchy might be not a principle at all because people in real world interactions, that usually have a goal to achieve, definitely is not to see how the design manages contrast, size and position. I have found myself missing tittles or subtitles when I read journals, books, websites and so on. So, design research has a lot to do to study the traditional design principles that have been established for so long in the design schools.

PS A final thought: should high hierarchy information be part of details and pop up from them?

Part of my current summer fellowship is that subjects have to find a room inside a building. It is biomedical informatics 125, which is in floor 10. Subjects can not ask anyone for directions. I designed the experiment hoping that user will go an look at the directory, study it, and go to the correct floor; however, subjects forget biomedical informatics, and look for room 125 in the entrance level. The directory becomes noise and most of the people start to look at every room number in the 1st floor. Of course, there is a serious problem with the experiment design. I did not realize that the 100 number is a very strong standard in the people for first floor. Indeed, this reveals a numbering problem in the building.

Besides, I have seen that many people relies on others to find places. Why bother trying to process visual information if you can ask people everywhere that have very good mental maps because the are everyday users? This issue leads me to think that the design of signage is a very complex problem that designers poorly have solved. The everyday users of the directory have different rooms to go; but there is still much to learn to make visual information more versatile for people.

Currently, I am doing a summer fellowship. I am studying how intelligence and mood affect the way people use visual information in physical and digital spaces. This is my exploratory stage and I only need 20 students from 2 colleges. So far I have 11 volunteers but everyday is more difficult to get new ones. I have seen some difficulties for this. First, the 90 minutes session is quite long because I am collecting qualitative data. Initially I thought that it was short, and it really is, but free time is not abundant today.  Second, people need good compensation to motivate them. I decided to ask the university review board for introducing a small amount gift card. Third, if you are unknown, people do not feel confident. I believe that people have decided not participate because they do not know me.

For future projects it is essential to think about easy recruitment. For example, professors and their student groups with some affiliation to the project. If the project is with teenagers, one can look for high school partners. Besides, reducing the time as much as possible might be good. However, shorter times make projects more quantitative prone. Thus, this will depend on the research design.