Having worked in the digital industry for over 6 years I am keen to understand the structure of the web more…learn to think before I design!

The habit we all get in to when designing for the web is looking at what others are doing, cause surely ‘if they are doing it that way it must be right’. I can’t tell you enough how much I have heard that line before. We design things this certain way because of the preconceived rules we have be lead to be believe is true. We think buttons should be green because that means go!

An interesting read we had in our first 2 weeks, The Work of Representation Chapter 1. Here in 1.3 Sharing the codes, it talks about traffic light. It concludes that it is us who fix the meaning not the colour, not the work, not the language not the object it is constructed by the meaning. You take away the colours or change the colours to pink, black and brown, the traffic light will still have meaning be it down to the sequence these colours appear in…we will still know what to do. Meaning depends on the relationship between things in the world – the people, object and events in which it appears be it real or fictional…these together allow us to construct its meaning. Take one away and still the meaning is there.

As we continue in our readings we approach on how technology has made it so that when we see an image this is not telling us anything about it and what was there. This is merely someones representation. It has been staged and framed by the person who sits behind the image who is trying to convey a specific meaning to us the viewer. However we find ourselves trying to find meaning and interpret what sits before us when in fact there is much more going on outside the frame that has been presented to us. This swiftly led me to find the psychology test called The Framing Effect by by psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman (1981). This is framing (displaying) certain elements to encourage a desired reaction/solution. This finding led me to a lot of resource with regards to this context and how this effect can be used to influence your audience.

One specific being from Vanseo Design,
The Framing Effect: Influence Your Audience By Setting The Context.

As we continue to research this area it becomes clear that in everything in everyday life we are having things framed to us…presented in a way to forced a particular reaction/opinion. It is only as we look around ourselves at the world first hand that we see what we want to see. Everything presented to us on television, internet, photographs is a simple representation that someone has chosen to show in particular. And with that we form our thoughts, emotions, opinions to make our conclusions and decisions about the subject. A very clever way to manipulative people in their actions and feelings.

Images are framed and this can be down to its colour/tone, the setting in which is laid, the wording to accompany the image. But as stated in Researching Visual Materials by Gillian Rose, not everyone will respond/see how the intended wanted them to. And to finish this part of a fantastic statement made by Christoper Pinney (2004: 8) the most important question is ‘not how images “look”, but what they can “do”. And this is exactly the area of importance for me.

I have continued on with my research and put my focus in to understanding the psychology of the internet/web ready to explore my area of interest.

The Psychology of the Internet by Patricia Wallace

Can how much we feel trust for a website influence how we react? As founded in “…personalised services from book recommendations to online portfolio analysis. Then we wonder what we gave up, in terms of privacy and to control to obtain them”. In summary when we post comments, give over own personal information to gain information back for ourselves, what is it that ensures we trust the site? We send this information over but with little to no knowledge of what happens with that information. Do we do it because others have? Are we influenced by conformity?

Your Online Persona. Warm and Cold Impressions
‘Warm and cold say a great deal about our dispositions and influence’
‘The cues people use to form some impression of your warmth are mainly non verbal. Your facial expressions can be a giveaway…’
‘In many corners of the Internet, your typed words take centre stage’
We now find ourselves expressing our emotions by the use of emoticons ‘…to add warmth to online communication’

The Psychology of the Internet book continues to mention that the homepage of any website is key and considers it as a ‘billboard or an ad in the yellow pages’ It declares it is here that you can create your first impression.

How can an impression be made through visuals on the web? Can peoples faces create an impression, a reaction? Can language be used to re-inforce what the image is trying to convey? Is image stronger that text?

Lasting one of the key readings I have found is by a wellknown Pschologist particularly for applying her practice to the design of techbology is Susan M. Weinschenk. She has many books published on this subject matter but one personal favourites of mine is, 100 Things Every Designer Needs To Know About People.

This makes for a fascinating read however a key criticism being that her main focus throughout is from the basis of other psychologists experiments and drawing conclusions from this and applying, and presuming, it would be the same for the web without any solid evidence to support it which have been tested within the digital stage.

Be this a bug bear her work does provide me a strong basis for some interesting research to how this can be applied to the web. Some snippets of interesting research follows:

Larson and Loschky Research

Additional research done by Dimitri Bayle (2009) shows that by placing objects within the peripheral vision people reacted faster than if they were placed centrally.

Paul Ekman’s Seven Universal Emotions

Susan goes on to say ‘If you’re using pictures to communicate (for example, pictures of people at a Web site), use one of the seven basic emotions in the picture to communicate them most clearly.’

Christine Looser and T Wheatley (2010)

We Look Where Faces Look.

Colour, shapes, framing – presentation of language can influence what people see and how it is read.