If all those potatoes are scattered around with intentional discord, we'll still group them, but the scene becomes unsightly and difficult to process. We see the potatoes as a group, because they’re similar to each other and they’re next to each other, and then think about how that pile relates to other groups in the scene. And when we look at a pile of potatoes, we don’t think about each individual potato’s relationship to all the other objects in the scene. A cross is not four lines meeting at the center, for instance, but two lines intersecting each other. The Gestalt laws of grouping are set of principles (observations, really, but useful ones) regarding how we perceive images and scenes, and are commonly applied to graphic design and fine arts.Īccording to the Gestalt school of thought, the 'whole' we perceive when looking at a scene is not just the sum of everything in the scene. I suspect that if the ‘clutter’ in a game is arranged in a pretty way, it won't be as effective as it can be at motivating 'cleaning.'įrom a visual design perspective, Gestalt psychology can also help explain our negative feelings toward clutter. The figure on the bottom, while not rigidly gridded or spaced, is a more pleasing abstract composition, even though it uses the same elements.
Its elements can be grouped by similarity and proximity, but not in a very meaningful way. We get to remove stressful visual noise without the stress of actually throwing out our decaying t-shirts or those bad oil paintings we did in college (using examples from my own life, here). Perhaps deleting virtual clutter is pleasant because it lets us enjoy tidying and organizing in a space cordoned off from our real belongings. But what if I need it later?Ī game, however, can lay that disarray into a grid-some squares pristine, others clearly marked as unsightly junk (which you've never really owned)-and all you have to do to restore order is click. We tend to value things we own more just because we own them, making it hard to toss even trivial things.
And yet many of us hold onto clutter despite the disarray impeding our focus. Article after article says that clutter increases stress, and though I've had trouble finding a lot of hard evidence, it is accepted that we can only process so much visual information at a time. I can’t wait to create a bottle opener hierarchy to determine which deserves to stay in my kitchen drawer.īut maybe all the life hackers are onto something.
#Psyche plays mods stardew valley how to#
The experimenters timed interruptions to break the subjects’ concentration when they were most engrossed in the task, and I’m frustrated just by reading the example: “The subject is moulding the clay figure of a dog he has reached the point where something four-legged and ‘dog-like’ is appearing, but there is still grave danger that his ‘dog’ will become a ‘cat’ before he is through.”īut what about cleaning itself? Why, specifically, does clicking on rocks to make them disappear feel satisfying? That’s what I set out to discover, but my research on the subject of tidying was frustrating, turning up pop psychology stories about how to unburden your refrigerator door for a healthier life and 10 ways to find your Zen by reorganizing your closet. Zeigarnik found that participants who were interrupted in the middle of a task could be very unhappy about it. The group that was interrupted felt more time had past. Both groups were then asked how long they’d spent solving the anagrams. Those who were given 10 were allowed to complete the entire set, while those who were given 20 were interrupted after solving the first 10 (which were the same problems the other group was given). In a 1992 study by Noah Schiffman and Suzanne Greist-Bousquet, participants were either given 10 or 20 anagrams to descramble. Incomplete tasks are also shown to have a lengthening effect on perceived time duration.