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 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.






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






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






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


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






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






7. A space that has territorial markers - opportunities for surveillance - and clear indications of activity and ownership.






8. The tendency to see attractive people as more intelligent - competent - moral and sociable than unattractive people.






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






10. A technique that influences decision making and judgement by manipulating the way information is presented.






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






12. Elements that are similar are perceived to be more related than elements that are dissimilar.






13. A phenomenon of memory in which noticeably different things are more likely to be recalled that common things. (AKA Isolation/Novelty Effect)






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






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






16. 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.






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


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






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






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






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






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






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






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






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






26. A tendency to see objects and patterns as 3D when certain visual cues are present.






27. An ability to detect threatening stimuli more efficiently than nonthreatening stimuli.






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






29. People understand and interact with systems and environments based on mental representations developed from experience.






30. 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?)






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






32. 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.






33. The process of organizing information into related groupings in order to manage complexity and reinforce relationships in the information.






34. Elements perceived as either figures (objects of focus) or ground (the rest of the perceptual field)






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






36. 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.






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






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






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






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






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






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






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






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






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






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






47. A strategy for managing information complexity in which only necessary or requested information is displayed at any given time.






48. A property in which a form is made up of parts similar to the whole or to one another.






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






50. The ratio of relevant to irrelevant information in a display. The highest possible signal- to- noise ratio is desirable in design.