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






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






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






4. A state of mental focus so intense that awareness of the 'real' world is lost - generally resulting in a feeling of joy and satisfaction.






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






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






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






8. There are three ways to organize materials to support a load or to contain and protect something: Mass structures - frame structures - and shell structures.






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






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






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






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






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






14. An original model on which something is patterned






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






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






17. 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.






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






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






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






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






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






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






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






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






26. 80% of the effects generated by any large system are caused by 20% of the variables.






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






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






29. A technique used to modify behavior by reinforcing desired behaviors - and ignoring or punishing undesired behaviors.






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






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






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






33. 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.






34. 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.






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






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






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






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






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






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






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






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






43. A technique of combining many units of information into a limited number of units or chunks - so that the information is easier to process and remember.






44. The visual clarity of text - generally based on the size - typeface - contrast - text block - and spacing of the characters used.






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






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






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






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






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






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