Visual Clutter
Definition
- Clutter is the state in which excess items, or their representation or organization, lead to a degradation of performance at some task. [Rosenholtz et al., 2005]
- Clutter may refer to any of the following:
- A confusing or disorderly state or collection; or the creation thereof. Excessive, unnecessary or uncontrolled clutter in a home or office is a sign of compulsive hoarding.
- Cluttering, a communication disorder
- The Clutter family, whose murder was documented in the Truman Capote "nonfiction novel" In Cold Blood
- A type of light pollution
- Unwanted echoes in electronic systems, particularly in refference to radars. Such echoes are typically returned from ground, sea, rain, animals, chaff and atmospheric turbulences.
- The jumble of odd posts placed in the first Top Level Post of a User Friendly member's diary by the Cluttersquad http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clutter
Introduction
Clutter is an important phenomenon in our lives, and an important consideration in the design of user interfaces and information visualizations. Many existing visualization systems are designed to reduce clutter by filtering what objects or information the user sees, or using non-linear magnification techniques so that objects in the center of the screen are allowed more display area. Tips for designing web pages, maps, and other visualizations often focus on techniques for displaying a large amount of information while keeping clutter to a minimum through careful choices of representation and organization of that information. [Rosenholtz et al., 2005]
Web pages
A home page might contain a logo and tag line, an attractive graphic, some site navigation buttons, and a welcome message. Now, it's common to see all of that and much more, including:
- Headlines and text for multiple news items
- Separate headers and quick links for several site features
- An assortment of graphics for promotions and advertisements
- Logos for various affiliates, memberships, and awards
- Copyright notices and other legal disclaimers
Another common problem of web page design is to find the right resolution of the design. A designer may have a high resolution monitor (1280x1024+) while a visitor has only a low-resolution monitor (800x600). If the page is designed for a higher resolution than the visitor can display, only a part of the page can be displayed. On the other hand, if a page is designed for a smaller resolution than a visitor can display, a lot of unusage space exists. [2]
Bibliography
- [Rosenholtz et al., 2005] Ruth Rosenholtz, Yuanzhen Li, Jonathan Mansfield, and Zhenlan Jin. Feature Congestion: A Measure of Display Clutter. http://web.mit.edu/rruth/www/Papers/RosenholtzEtAlCHI2005Clutter.pdf