Have you wondered what factors have a key impact on people’s judgment?
We go to you with an answer.
In our research, it came out that for the viewers the most critical four aspects of visuals are:
-the time of day
-color intensity
-perspective
-the presence or absence of people
These are what we should focus on.
Let’s start with time of day:
For the study, we used 4 photos of the same building at different times of day: at sunrise and at sunset, at midday, and at night (to check the reliability of the study, we took two test samples – 8 photos in total).
We asked groups of 400 people what they thought of the following photos. We asked them to rate each of them on a scale of 1 to 5.
I will show you the results:
The respondents’ favorite times of day were west (3.83) and east (3.63). The night visualizations were the worst.
It is no coincidence that the most beautiful part of the day is said to be the ‘golden hour. At this time, buildings will look best for photography.
Now you know what time of day will appeal to your audience.
It’s time to find out what color intensity most appeals to people:
For the study, we used 4 photos of the same building with different color intensities: from the strongest to the weakest, i.e. black and white (to check the reliability of the study, we took two test samples – 8 photos in total).
We asked a group of 400 people what they thought of the following photos. We asked them to rate each of them on a scale of 1 to 5.
I will now present the results to you:
The results clearly showed that the color intensity should be high, but not maximum. Respondents overwhelmingly chose the photos with increased color intensity, and those with the strongest colors were chosen second.
The lower the intensity of the colors in the photograph, the lower the respondents’ ratings – black and white photographs fared the worst, while slightly better, but still poorly, were those with strongly reduced intensity.
A golden balance is needed in life as well as in color intensity.
Color intensity is behind us, but what about perspective?
For the survey, we used 4 photos of the same building with different frames (to check the reliability of the survey, we took two survey samples – 8 photos in total).
We asked groups of 400 people what they thought of the photos below. We asked them to rate each of them on a scale from 1 to 5.
I will now give you the results:
The buildings from a ‘bird’s eye perspective are the best, while those that cut off or obscure the building with additional elements are the weakest.
In second place came a photo that also shows the overall perspective – including the surroundings. This means that context is important to people.
And now the last thing:
How respondents rated the visualization with and without people:
For the study, we used 4 photos of the same building with different numbers of people: from the largest number of people playing a prominent role to smaller and smaller people in the background to no people at all (to test the reliability of the study, we took two survey samples – 8 photos in total).
We asked groups of 400 people what they thought of the following photos. We asked them to rate each of them on a scale of 1 to 5.
I will now give you the results:
The visualizations with no or few people, in the background, are rated best.
The lowest scores were given to visualizations in which people were the foreground characters.
You’ve already learned the 4 key factors that go into evaluating visuals. Use the tips and create visualizations that will delight everyone!
