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






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






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






4. 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.






5. 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)






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






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






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






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






10. 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.






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






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






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






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






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






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






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






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






19. The level of control provided by a system should be related to the proficiency and experience levels of the people using the system.






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






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






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






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






24. Pictures are remembered better than words.






25. 80% of the effects generated by any large system are caused by 20% of the variables.






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






27. 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.






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






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






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






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






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






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






34. 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.






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






36. 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?)






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






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






39. The distressing state of thought caused by recognizing an inconsistency between behavior/thought and value/belief.






40. As the flexiblity of a system increases - its usability decreases.






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






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






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






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






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






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






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






48. Memory for recognizing things is better than memory for recalling things.






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






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