Design, Multimedia and Visual Communication

SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES: The course is aimed at familiarizing students with the psychological basis of spatial behavior and the application of this knowledge to the design of systems and environments. Specifically, the course will address critical aspects of attention (selecting, focusing, dividing, and sustaining) with special reference to their implications in the design of devices and environments. A large part of the course will be devoted to the issue of visual search, that is the visual scanning of the environment oriented to locate a particular target among irrelevant or distracting stimuli, as well as to the design of complex systems that do not produce clutter hindering the focus of attention. Spatial behavior will be addressed within the general framework of human factors and ergonomics (proximity-compatibility principle, 2D and 3D space representation, visualization, navigation, wayfinding).