MIT designs clutter detector
Have you ever been in a rental car and wasted time trying to figure out how to open the trunk from the driver’s seat or turn on the headlights? Have you been in a restaurant with a menu that has so many words and typefaces on a page that you have to concentrate intensely to decide what you want to order?
A team of engineers at MIT believes that these frustrations are caused by visual clutter. In response, they have designed a visual clutter detector to identify when bad design hampers a person’s ability to understand information, causes confusion, or interrupts concentration. The clutter detector is “a breakthrough that could help everyone from fighter pilots to Web site designers.”
A PC World article discusses the clutter detector’s methodology:
… clutter is perceived differently by different people, so coming up with a universal measure of what’s hard or easy to pick out in a display is challenging. The model takes into account such factors as color, data and contrast.
Visual clutter is obviously different from physical clutter, but if you rid your view of clutter then you rid yourself of distractions. Check out the article and the underlying research (available for .zip download here) for more details.
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Posted by Matt on Sep 10, 2007 |
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3 comments posted
Posted by William Mize - 09/10/2007
Boy, if you need a machine to tell you that you have too much clutter, you probably have too much money on your hands. I’ll come tell you that you need to clean up a bit for much less
Unless it is a very cool robot with laser beams, then I will come over and watch. I, for one, welcome our new Uncluttering Robot Overlords.
Posted by Jon Matthias - 09/10/2007
My robot would eat the things I don’t want anymore and poop out cash. Sooo much better than dealing with the doofuses on craigslist and eBay lately.
Plus lasers would be cool.
Posted by Anonymous - 09/12/2007
It’s for interface designs, not your messy bedroom.
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