Rex Chung — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:53:04 GMT

Great stuff! One of the best article I’ve read in a while.
This type of research strengthens the theory of how the brain works from ‘On intelligence’ by Jeff Hawkins that I’ve been reading. He suggests that our brain make predictions and process information at the same time. In this case, our brain makes a prediction of what the icon is from the blurry details received and from our own memory.

I’m interested to know if there’s research with familliar icons/signs together with spatial frequency. I think what the user already knows add a big difference to recognition, e.g. red and ’!’ usually means warning, danger. The common shape of ‘arrow’, ‘home’ and ‘refresh’ icons are already in our memory. I’ve personally experienced the difference it makes when Yahoo decided to flip the icons horizontally, even though the elements in the icon was the same, I just couldnt recognise it. E.g. if we put the chimney of the house icon to the left side, it just doesn’t look right.

Boxes and Arrows: Comments by Rex Chung