- Labels initially are seen as applying to the closest graphic element.
- Common color organizes parts of a display into a group, even if they’re separated by space. 
- Because shape and location largely are processed separately in the visual system, an element in one location won’t always be easily grouped with elements in other locations. So, it’s useful to create a display so that separated-but-related elements are explicitly grouped. 
- Comprehension is impaired by spurious groups, which form accidentally because of the grouping laws (for example, such as those that can form when pairs of measurements for two or more categories are plotted in the same scatter plot, or when a banner at the top of a slide groups with specific objects in the display because of proximity or similarity).


The Principle of Perceptual Organization’s Corollaries

The P.P.O. entails that people automatically organize elements into groups, which they then attend to, and remember more accurately. 

Ohio State University, Columbus

When viewing a sequence of slide, the audience primarily will encode what they see, and if they fail to encode material, it may as well not even exist. The follow three principles cover encoding processes in this context: Discriminability, Perceptual Organization, and Salience.

Encoding Processes

Kosslyn, S. M., Kievit, R. A., Russell, A. G., & Shephard, J. M. (2012, July 17). PowerPoint® Presentation Flaws and failures: A psychological analysis. Frontiers. Retrieved September 22, 2022, from https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00230/full 

PowerPoint® Presentation Flaws and Failures: A Psychological Analysis

Classical grouping “Laws” specify the perceptual conditions that guide viewers to see elements in a single group. For example, people tend to group together elements that are nearby (The Law of Proximity). Similarly, we group together elements that appear similar (The Law of Similarity). 

Other Information Processing Laws

The P.D. means that two properties (such as two colors, degrees of gray, or sizes) can’t convey different information unless they differ by a large enough proportion to be easily distinguished. 

The Principle of Discriminability 

Principle of Perceptual Organization

The P.L.C. states that people have a limited capacity to retain and process information, and won’t understand a message if too much information needs to be memorized and processed. 

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