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






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






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






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






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






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






7. 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.






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






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






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






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






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






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






14. 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.)






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






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






17. 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.






18. 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.






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






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






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






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






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






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






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






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






27. 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.






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






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






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






31. Pictures are remembered better than words.






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






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






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






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






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






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






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






39. A method of managing system complexity that involves dividing large systems into multiple - smaller self- contained systems.






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






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






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






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






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






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


46. 80% of the effects generated by any large system are caused by 20% of the variables.






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


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






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






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