Design And Emotion Lecture

For this lecture we began by being shown an photographic image and to express our current thoughts and emotions for what we could see. Collectively the group concluded that the image was of a under exposed photograph of a lamppost. For the emotive effect however, this created a generation of varied emotions towards the photograph speculating what the meaning behind the photograph could possibly be. I personally thought that the photographs was of a sinister looking nature, showing intense dominance due to the low angle shot. On the other side I tried to think of a more positive reason behind the photograph, this came to be with the expression of the light at the end of the tunnel, where the light symbolizes hope within the darkness.

This is done through a process called Sensory Information Processing.

We was then met by a series of illusions and perception challenges, the first being colour vision, where there were a range of dot patterns with some of the dots being a different colour to the background. This was to understand the effect colour blindness, and how colour can effect our perspective. We also looked at some of the more common illusion designs, where an overlaying pattern of colours consisted in a circle, created the effect of them moving in your peripheral vision, this was explain to be because of the, intensity of your brain capturing each colour simulating that they are moving when they are in fact not.

Something that caught my attention during the lecture was the way our perspective can be tricked into seeing something complete, when in reality it is not. Almost like a mirage. This is done because of the way in which our eyes process information, using pieces of data to construct for what we would commonly see as normal.

This has been shown by the upside down mouth on a photograph illusion phenomenon, where your brain is tricked into think that it is normal at first glance but isn't at all. However this was shown in the lecture through a You Tube video of a T-Rex, where when you position changes, the T-rex eyes keep following you. I was really impressed at how this was occurring and was trying to guess how this was happening. This eventually was revealed to be complex arrangement of mirrors design to reflect the T-rex, showing that our eyes can be easily fooled by great design.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4QcyW-qTUg&list=LLaJu6gGe3ieAEdT8PfprfOA&index=44

Perception = We Override Our Own Reality = How we Interpretate information

It was quoted in the lecture that "We Expect What We Expect To See", meaning that when our brain is met with some foreign information, it try's to normalise the situation, by processing what we perceive to be normal.

Example of this are show through: 

Inkblots

The Exceptions Effect

Priming

Depth Perception

Overall I found that this lecture opened my eyes to how we underestimate our mind, and sometimes to not fully question if what we are seeing is truly what we are seeing. I felt like this lecture was more about psychology, but the idea of design is to produce visual material for that which creates a certain emotion, and I think that I understand more about how to create emotion though design.