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






2. A technique for bringing attention to an area of text or image.






3. Elements that are connected by uniform visual properties - such as color - are perceived to be more related than elements that are not connected.






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






5. A Gestalt principle of organization holding that aspects of perceptual field that move or function in a similar manner will be perceived as a unit






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






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






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






9. Pictures are remembered better than words.






10. The time it takes to make a decision increases as the number of alternatives increases.


11. The tendency for people to behave differently when they know they are being studied






12. When participants realise the aim of the study and may change their behaviour to help or disrupt the study.






13. 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.






14. 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.






15. Repeated exposure to stimuli for which people have neutral feelings will increase the likeability of the stimuli.






16. 1) Physiological 2) Safety 3) Love 4) Self-Esteem 5) Self-Actualization


17. A method of reorganizing information to make the information simpler - more meaningful and easier to remember. (ie. First Letter - Keyword - Rhyme - Feature Name)






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






19. The usability of a system is improved when its status and methods of use are clearly visible.






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






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






22. The use of simplified and incomplete models of a design to explore ideas - elaborate requirements - refine specifications - and test functionality.






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






24. Patients experience treatment effects based on their belief that a treatment will work.






25. All products progress sequentially through four stages of existence: introduction - growth - maturity - and decline.






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






27. A tendency to interpret shaded or dark areas of an object as shadows resulting from a light source above the object.






28. 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?)






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






30. Tendency to form an overall positive impression of a person on the basis of one positive characteristic






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






32. The ratio of face to body in an image that influences the way the person in the image is perceived. (High = intelligent / Low = physical)






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






34. 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.






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






36. The deliberate use of a weak element that will fail in order to protect other elements in the system from damage.






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






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






39. An original model on which something is patterned






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






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






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






43. A technique of composition in which a medium is divided into thirds - creating aesthetic positions for the primary elements of a design.






44. A tendency to assume that a system that works at one scale will also work at a smaller or larger scale. (2 kinds: Load assumptions and Interaction assumptions)






45. A diagram that describes the general pattern followed by the eyes when looking at evenly distributed - homogeneous information.






46. A phenomenon in which perception and behavior changes as a result of personal expectations or the expectations of others. (Halo effect - Hawthorne effect - Pygmalion effect - Placebo effect - Rosenthal effect - Demand characteristics.)






47. The tendency for people to perform better or worse based on the expectations of another.






48. 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.






49. The use of more elements than necessary to maintain the performance of a system in the event of failure of one or more of the elements.






50. A method of limiting the actions that can be performed on a system.