Happy New Year! I hope everyone is having a great 2024 so far. Chapter 8 of “Designing Immersive 3D Experiences” focuses on incorporating “human factors;” knowledge of how people perceive, solve problems, and process information, into XR design. Graphic Design is a large part of this design process, as the Gestalt Principles, theories of how the human brain processes visual information, are essential tools in creating real and virtual objects that users can understand. 

Today’s design exercise is to create a design of dashes and dots for a six sided cube using at least 3 Gestalt Principles. The goal is to have the design lead the user to examine all sides of the cube without giving them any explicit instructions to do so. My design uses contrasting colored dots and connecting dashes to lead the eye to other sides of the cube, and hint that every other face has part of the full design. While the blue dots are on the “inside” of the design, the green dots “point” to other green dots on other faces of the cube. I chose to complete my design on the folded cube rather than the flat version so I could make sure neighboring dots “pointed” in the right direction, and did not confuse the user. My cube uses the principles of Similarity, Proximity, and Continuation to make the final design visually appealing and easy to use. Next chapter I finally get to use the design principles I’ve learned to make my own 3D virtual design! Look forward to it!

“Gestalt Principles.” UX Hints, https://uxhints.com/visual-ui-design/gestalt-principles/, 2024. 

Stevens, Renee. Designing Immersive 3D Experiences. Pearson Education Inc., 2022.