Since time immemorial humans have relied on their tools of perception to survive in this mortal world. From our ancestors always on a lookout for the predators to us checking the road twice before crossing it, we heavily rely on our visual apparatus to survive in this world. To an extent that we can’t even imagine ourselves without it anymore. Our visual perception is the greatest gift of human evolution that took thousands of years to come to its full glory. From a microorganism who couldn’t see anything to an evolved human being, we have come a long way.
To make sense of this world we interact with it, most importantly we observe it. When we see something we try to make sense of it by verifying it with our already existing mental patterns in our memory. After making a successful match, we ‘recognise’ it. The more that ‘something’ comes in front of us, the more concrete the mental pattern for that thing becomes in our mind i.e we learn to recognise it instantly. That’s why the things we interact with daily, we get better at using them. But how do we recognise something? Is there any logic to it? Are there any laws or principles that govern our visual perception? Do these laws apply to our modern gadgets too? Is there any science behind web design? We will try to find answers to these questions via this article. Let's begin.
The Origin of Gestalt Psychology
We are not the first ones who have asked these questions. They must have existed from the times we learned to use our visual apparatus consciously.
Wilhelm Wundt (Aug 16, 1832 - Aug 31, 1920) is regarded as the founding father of experimental psychology. Wundt believed that psychology should focus on the human’s subjective interpretation of this world and should analyse human consciousness under controlled conditions to get a better understanding of the functioning of a human mind. Wundt’s thoughts laid the founding stones for the concept of Structuralism.
Structuralism tried to understand a human mind by breaking it into components and learning the way they are pieced together to generate a complex experience, as well as how they are related to physical and visible events.
Structuralism states that to generate a perception we need to put together the unconscious combination of elements called ‘sensations’ in a human mind. These sensations can be looked at as individual dots in a pointillist portrait (image below) which makes no sense while looked at individually but when looked together we form a meaningful image I.e a human face.
Structuralism gave rise to Gestalt Psychology; A theory of mind that describes human perception according to the ways in which visual information is brought together to form a whole, meaningful objects from individual visual elements.
Founding fathers of Gestalt Psychology
Max Wertheimer along with Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Kohler came up with Gestalt psychology when they realised that they can’t explain a perception where something is present one moment and absent the next in terms of Structuralism ‘sensations’ idea. This led the founding fathers of Gestalt Psychology to propose; when it comes to human perception ‘the whole is different then the sum of its parts’.
Humans share some common principles when it comes to our sense of perception. In other words, humans are governed by some basic laws of perception that make us perceive this world in a unified manner. Gestalt Psychology tries to unravel that common ground by defining some basic principles that govern our sense of perception. These laws are applicable to everything, from our day to day activities to our digital experience. This makes it mandatory for designers to have an understanding of these underlying principles so that they can design the digital experience in a more relative manner and solve user’s problems in a much more effective way.
The underlying principles of Gestalt psychology
Emergence
Emergence is a key Gestalt principle that talks about the perceptual experience where some meaningful element emerges from a scene without any conscious effort or understanding. Have you ever noticed that face that randomly emerged from that complex pattern on the wall? Well if you did then you have experienced the law of emergence.
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