100 Things: Every Designer Needs to Know About People

1. What You See isn’t What Your Brain Gets

You think that as you’re walking around looking at the world, your eyes are sending information to your brain, which processes it and gives you a realistic experience of “what’s out there.” But the truth is that what your brain comes up with isn’t exactly what your eyes are seeing. Your brain is constantly interpreting everything you see. Take a look at Figure 1.1, for example.

Figure 1.1. You see triangles, but they are not really there

What do you see? At first you probably see a triangle with a black border in the background, and an upside-down, white triangle on top of it. Of course, that’s not really ...