The Gestalt Experiment:
Find 3 people to act as test subjects, by showing them a series of images and recording how long it takes them to “discover” the object created with Gestalt properties.
Visual: This one was a bust; I think she actually took it easy on me. After viewing the common subject photos of animals and nature, she saw the horse and rider image with only a couple clicks. After telling her she had to view the second set, she saw it without a single click past the color images and recognized it as the same gestalt image. Then she told me she had already seen this image before…. should have done more research on her history.
Teenager: My cousin took almost all 20 clicks to “see” the image. Being 14, I don’t think she has had much experience with art, or gestalt principles I kind of think she never actually saw the image, until I explained it out to her in a connect the dots manner. With the second set, she recognized and remembered it was the same image after only 12 clicks. So lesson learned here is recognition and remembrance is actually present on the minds of snarky teenagers, and not just attitudes.
Mid 20’:
This participant went through all the introductory slides asking if these were related in any way. She then went all 20 slides, and still could not “see” the horse and rider. In the second set she again wondered if the slides where related in any way, but this time in the Gestalt section on the first slide, knew exactly that it was the same as the previous example.
Final takeaway: Gestalt principles can be handy when creating a “pirates treasure map” one participant told me. And Non-artistic persons can struggle with seeing simple shapes coalesce into a cohesive object without using connecting lines. In this manner it is best to design in basics, then enlighten your client to more advanced techniques for effect placement of the design.
