Test your basic knowledge |

Design Principles

Subject : engineering
Instructions:
  • Answer 50 questions in 15 minutes.
  • If you are not ready to take this test, you can study here.
  • Match each statement with the correct term.
  • Don't refresh. All questions and answers are randomly picked and ordered every time you load a test.

This is a study tool. The 3 wrong answers for each question are randomly chosen from answers to other questions. So, you might find at times the answers obvious, but you will see it re-enforces your understanding as you take the test each time.
1. Elements that are connected by uniform visual properties - such as color - are perceived to be more related than elements that are not connected.






2. An activity will be pursued only if its benefits are equal to or greater than the costs. (ie. How much reading is too much to get the point of a message?)






3. Teachers treat students differently based on their expectations of how students will perform.






4. Tendency to perceive a set of individual elements as a single - recogniable pattern - rather than multiple - individual elements.






5. The act of measuring certain sensitive variable in a system can alter them - and confound the accuracy of the measurement.






6. The process of using spatial and environmental information to navigate to a destination.






7. An action or ommission of action yielding an unintended result.






8. There are five ways to organize information: Category - time - location - alphabet - and continuum.






9. A technique used to asociate a stimulus with an unconscious physical or emotional response.






10. A ratio within the elements of a form - such as height to width - approximating 0.618.






11. The relative ease with which a destination - idea - or concept may be reached.






12. A technique for preventing unintended actions by requiring verification of the actions before they are performed.






13. A method of presentation in which information is presented in descending order of importance. (Critical information presented first).






14. A tendency to prefer environments with unobstructed views (prospects) and areas of concealment and retreat (refuges).






15. A technique used to teach a desired behavior by reinforcing increasingly accurate approximations of the behavior.






16. Using more elements than is necessary to offset the effects of unknown variables which may cause a system failure.






17. Teh act of copying properties of familiar objects - organisms - or environments in order to realize specifice benefits afforded by those properties.






18. Designs should help people avoid errors and minimize the negative consequences of errors when they do occur.






19. Hierarchical organization is the simplest structure for visualizing and understanding complexity.






20. A tendency to interpret ambiguous images as simple and a complete unit - versus complex and incomplete. (Gestalt principle of perception).






21. A term used to describe a set of data - that when plotted - forms a symmetrical - bell- shaped curve.






22. A relationship between controls and their movements or effects. When th effect corresponds to the expectation - the mapping is considered to be good or natural.






23. A point of physical or attentional entry into a design. (Minimal Barriers - Points of Prospect - Progressive Lures)






24. A Gestalt law of organization; elements arrange in a straight line or a smooth curve are perceived as a group - and are interpreted as being more related than elements not on the line or curve.






25. Adjusting parts of a device in relation to each other to create a sense of unity and cohesion.






26. The greater the effort to accomplish a task - the less likely the task will be accomplished successfully.






27. Beauty in design results from purity of function. Interpreted in 2 ways: A description of beauty or a prescription for beauty.






28. A process in which similar characteristics evolve independently in multiple systems.






29. A phenomenon of visual processing in which certain line orientations are more quickly and easily processed and discriminated than other line orientations.






30. A tendency to see people and things iwth baby- faced features as more naive - helpless - and honest than those with mature features.






31. Successful products typically follow four stages of creation: requirements - design - development - and testing.






32. The time required to move to a target is a function of the target size and distance to the target.


33. A process of repeating a set of operation until a specific result is achieved.






34. An attribute of an object that allows people to intuitively know how to use it






35. People tend to prefer savanna- like environments to other types of environments. Open areas - scattered trees - water - and uniform grassiness rather than other natural environments such as desert - jungle - and complex mtns.






36. A sequence of numbers in which each number is the sum of the preceding two.






37. Elements that are close together are percieved to be more related than elements that are farther apart.






38. The designs that help people perform optimally are often not the same as the designs that people find most desirable.






39. The tendency to perceive objects as unchanging - despite changes in sensory input. (such as perspective - lighting - color or size)






40. A method of creating imagery - emotions - and understanding of events through an interaction between a storyteller and an audience.






41. The usability of a system is improved when similar parts are expressed in similar ways.






42. A relationship between variables in a system where the consequences of an event are fed back in order to modify the event in the future.






43. The debgree to which prose can be understood - based on the complexity of words and sentences.






44. A method of illustrating relationships and patterns in system behaviors by representing two or more system variables in a controlled way.






45. A phenomenon of memory in which information that is analyzed deeply is better recalled than information that is analyzed superficially.






46. A tendency to prefer faces in which the eyes - nose - lips and other features are close to the average of a population.






47. A phenomenon in which mental processing is made slower and less accurate by competing mental processes.






48. The use of pictorial images to improve the recognition and recall of signs and controls.






49. The quality of system output is dependent on the quality of system input.






50. A preference for a particular ratio of waist size to hip size in men and women. Men prefer 0.7 in women. Women prefer 0.9 in men.