Bridging the Perceptual Gap: Visual Mapping, Client Feedback, and the Unconscious Mind in Design

Historically, the unconscious has been seen as something mystical and unreachable—a scientific hurdle to understanding cognition. From scientists to magicians, those able to peek into the cognitive black box and seemingly read minds hold special insight into how we think and why we make choices. Among these mind-readers are creatives, tasked with translating between concrete goals and abstract design, while also predicting audience perceptions.

To gain insight into how cognition, perception, and interpretation can be better understood and measured, we interviewed top advertisers, marketers, and designers about their creative workflows and professional processes, as well as the tools they use. By comparing these insights to scientific literature, we have compiled a comprehensive look into design from a psychological perspective and uncovered some gaps that scientific technology may be able to fill.

Designers have been drawing on psychological theory for years, spanning from color psychology and Gestalt theory to semiotics. While color psychology is not an exact science, it does offer insight into the attributes we assign to colors and how they can be leveraged to evoke associations¹. Gestalt theory proposes that we perceive our surroundings as a whole that is much more than a sum of its parts, allowing for interpretation to add, unite, and deepen perceptions. Semiotics takes a scientific approach to design, breaking down images to understand how we derive meaning from them. Unique to semiotics is the idea that an image and its meaning are not isolated. Instead, they are explained as a social process involving the beliefs and values of both producer and viewer.² Together, these design-centric theories highlight how visual processing is highly contextual and depends on many factors beyond the visual stimulus. To better understand how these outside factors fit together, we can turn to cognitive theories on visual processing.

Scientists have not yet reached a consensus on exactly how humans think; however, various schools of thought exist for the pathways information takes as it is processed. The Dual Process Theory, for example, separates thought into two complementary systems: Type 1 is fast, intuitive, and unconscious, and Type 2 is slow and reflective³. We might associate Type 1 with immediate or “gut” reactions, and Type 2 with structured and measured responses. Building on these two pathways, we can identify specific brain regions responsible for processing. Scientists have identified the “default mode network⁴”, or DMN, and “task-positive network⁵”, or TPN, which are connected regions of the brain active during differing tasks. Whereas the TPN is active during specific, goal-directed tasks that are associated with Type 2 processing, the DMN is active when the brain is at rest, processing and compiling information in the background, which is associated with Type 1. Specifically, the DMN is responsible for self-referential processes, like consideration of one’s thoughts and feelings, which is an integral part of processing design and explaining reactions⁶ .

A study by Wilson and Nisbett (1978)⁷ is foundational in understanding the unconscious influence on decisions and how the roots of our decisions are often difficult to pinpoint. In this study, participants were asked to make choices between objects without knowing that they were being specifically manipulated to select certain ones. These manipulations specifically targeted the unconscious, including giving certain objects a pleasant smell or placing them in a certain order. Participants were unable to identify the underlying cause of their decision, attributing it only to personal preference, despite the study results showing that the manipulations had a significant effect on choice.

Understanding our actions is further complicated by the “choice blindness” phenomenon. In the critical study by Johansson et al. (2005)⁸, participants were asked to choose between two photos of faces based on attractiveness. When the researcher handed them the face they had not chosen, participants did not notice the switch and justified the photo they were given as if it were their original choice. We often do not know why we act or decide, with Nisbett and Wilson going so far as to claim that “when people attempt to report on their cognitive processes [that mediates] the effects of a stimulus on a response, they do not do so on the basis of any true introspection” (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977)⁹. Specific to purchasing habits, consumer choices are highly influenced by nonconscious stimuli, such as these manipulations, which pose significant difficulties for understanding decision-making.¹⁰

Creatives are uniquely familiar with the difficulties the unconscious poses as they face the challenge of mediating between stakeholders and creative teams. Our interviewees emphasized the importance of gaining an initial understanding and conducting intensive research in the early phases of a project to provide as much actionable information as possible. During this initial pre-design phase, designers and clients must be aligned on brand identity, brand story, business problem, design need, target consumer, consumer wants, and countless other factors that influence the first design choices. However, decision-makers on the client side may not have a unified understanding or be able to articulate their view of their brand. The implications of misalignment can be costly, both in time and money, and lead to longer revision cycles down the line.

The most difficult hurdle to commercial design identified throughout the interviews is the difficulty of critiquing art. This is where most interviewees identified difficulties rooted in unconscious decisions, explaining that clients often give vague feedback in the revision process. Examples of clients saying “I don’t like this,” or “This doesn’t feel right,” were frequent in interviews, and our creatives expressed that interpreting non-specific feedback was a significant pain point. The problems underlying perception and unconscious processing are exacerbated in the interpretation of art, as it evokes emotions and aesthetic preferences that are difficult to articulate. Specifically, responses to visual art activate the DMN¹¹, the unconscious, self-referential network, meaning reactions are highly individual and hard to express clearly. Sentiments like “brand is art,” “the way humans respond to creativity is super nuanced,” and “creative ideas need to be talked out,” from interviews, highlight just how difficult it can be for clients and audiences to produce clear, actionable, and specific feedback to something as subjective and abstract as design.

Predicting audience feedback is also a necessary challenge for designers. Interviewees described moments when their agency’s designs underperformed or landed incorrectly, either due to being generic or including misinterpreted messaging. They noted that, especially in specific, oversaturated markets like the beverage or B2B tech industries, brand personality must be unique and the messaging distinct. However, when a brand subverts its audience’s expectations too much and the brand’s messaging is incongruent with the consumer’s perception of brand personality and purpose, audiences can experience cognitive dissonance¹². To correct that feeling, audiences may reject a brand they were previously loyal to. Even consumers with a high self-brand connection have been found to exhibit more anti-brand sentiments following an incongruent rebrand¹³. The other extreme is overpolishing and producing a generic design, which may not result in outrage, but may not generate a consumer response at all. Maintaining balance between these two outcomes includes the use of creative intuition, as well as audience testing.

With a recent rise in neuromarketing, agencies have turned to psychological measures for testing to offer in-depth, quantitative insights into audiences’ minds. This field includes EEGs and fMRIs to measure electrical activity in the brain, heart rate monitors and skin response monitors to measure physiological responses, eye-tracking technology to measure attention, and the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to measure unconscious associations¹⁴. These methods “directly [probe] minds without requiring demanding cognitive or conscious participation¹⁵,” allowing researchers to access unconscious processes. Providing quantitative data is another advantage, which, as identified by interviewees, is extremely helpful in convincing clients of creative choices and continuing forward motion on a project. However, in addition to being expensive, time-consuming, and producing limited data sets, each tool in this field also has specific limitations.

EEGs and fMRIs help assess the value of a piece of advertising based on neural activation, but cannot explain the reason for activation. Using these tools only provides understanding of when or where the brain has been activated, but not insight into sophisticated cognitive processes or how the media was interpreted.

Similarly, physiological measures can quantify response to advertisements, such as an increase in pulse, but cannot distinguish a positive reaction from a negative one. For example, if someone is shown a frightening picture, their increase in heart rate might be similar to one produced by an excitement-inducing advertisement. Eye-tracking offers slightly more insight into how individuals are viewing media and can be very helpful for UX design. It reveals the order in which audiences attend to and process visual information, which can be translated into layout and format changes. However, complex content changes cannot rely on eye-tracking information, as attention gives no explanation for interpretation.

The use of the IAT is slightly more sophisticated and is typically used to measure brand preference. It has been found to predict consumer behavior more accurately than explicit attitude measures alone—such as asking a consumer what they think about a brand—as it taps into unconscious associations and biases that consumers may be unaware of¹⁶. There is also a theoretical foundation for using the IAT to measure brand equity based on “abstract characteristics of product¹⁷” or brand image and brand personality. Using an association test may help designers and their clients better quantitatively understand what attributes customers assign to brands, but there is not yet a form of IAT built for branding or art.

While the field of neuromarketing is promising, our interviewees mostly used other measures that were more qualitative in their results. The most common measure mentioned was focus groups, which gather insights through open-ended questions and conversation. Interviewees highlighted how focus groups can identify a missing piece of a project, especially when the project draws on demographic or community-specific experiences that designers may not be as familiar with. Focus groups can also help hit specific project goals, such as being relevant to a younger audience, with one interviewee describing their “youth panel” that they relied on for quick feedback on design choices.

However, focus groups also have their disadvantages. In a study specific to brand equity¹⁸, researchers found that consumers are often unable to verbalize their brand perceptions accurately, or are unaware of brand associations without being specifically prompted about them. In a general sense, focus groups can fall victim to various psychological phenomena¹⁹, including the “polarization” effect, in which attitudes become more extreme after group discussion; groupthink, in which participants conform to dominant opinions; or demand characteristics, in which participants give answers they believe to be desirable to the interviewer. There are also social pressures, which may cause participants to adjust their answers to be more “socially acceptable” or limit their responses on more sensitive topics. Even if participant responses are accurate and helpful, focus groups are often just a small sample of potential buyers, and therefore may not reflect a wider audience’s perspective. Conducting more tests or with larger groups quickly gets expensive and requires more time to sort through responses.

A common alternative to focus groups is surveys, which can be administered easily, collect large amounts of easy-to-interpret data, and provide insight into specific metrics. Our interviewees described using surveys before starting a project to better understand who consumers are and what they are looking for, as well as during the production process to test various design elements, including packaging, store displays, webpages, or overall concepts. While surveys and other quick methods like A/B testing provide sufficient data for specific measures, they are limited by their questions and do not probe deeper into perceptions. There remains the problem of understanding why someone chose a specific response.

While these methods may help design teams understand how a project will be received, trying to understand client perceptions requires more nuanced and creative approaches. Interviewees described various strategies they had developed to translate between client interpretations and design choices. One interviewee described using an AI model, programmed to mimic the CEO of a client they worked with, to predict feedback and speed up revision cycles. Another would have clients write directly on design boards, circling what they responded to most to alleviate having to describe visual decisions and preferences. One interviewee had shareholders choose from a set of personalities or archetypes to understand exactly how they wanted to express their brand’s values and attributes.

The most common technique was simply to spend more time with clients, allowing them to better understand the reasons behind feedback and produce more nuanced revisions. Interviewees described studying body language in feedback meetings, prompting clients with certain aspects of the design to comment on, giving clients drafts of already fleshed-out designs to involve them more, or asking clients to “sleep on it” before giving complete feedback. While these techniques helped reach understanding, interviewees highlighted difficulties, such as having strict deadlines or clients being too busy to meet with designers.

Throughout our research, including both interviews with designers and reading cognitive science literature, we were able to find gaps in how creatives are using data to understand their clients and audiences. Through listening to designers, we identified specific pain points—long revision cycles, vision misalignment, gathering feedback from various stakeholders, and ensuring that design is only refined, not overpolished—that might be alleviated with new testing techniques. We noted that designers and clients favor quantitative data, as it is easier to interpret and act on than qualitative data, but that most quantitative measures are expensive, time-consuming, and do not offer deep insight into perception. Quantitative tools are also only applied to audience perception, leaving minimal ways to gather data from stakeholders on their thoughts. In order to fully understand the intentions behind client feedback, designers often rely on conversational or free-association techniques, but these are not sufficient in translating to actionable insight. These interview-sourced methods identify how designers work around the challenges of expressing unconscious associations, but also reveal gaps in where data could be used to explore perceptions more deeply.

Based on these shortcomings, we developed a tool called Constellations that uses visuals to probe brand associations, as well as other unconscious associations users might hold. Our approach uses a visual perception map to reveal what people find meaningful in particular contexts. For example, audiences may describe a brand’s personality as innovative, intellectual, and solid, but using visuals to assess those aspects provides one of the most promising ways of understanding how those adjectives manifest in the audience’s minds²⁰. By using associative methods and building on research using IAT, we can better understand the patterns or motifs present in people’s brand perceptions and how they visualize specific brand attributes²¹. 

The unconscious continues to pose challenges for the field of cognitive science and creatives alike, but drawing on insights from both psychology and design helps identify specific gaps to investigate further. By translating unconscious associations into visual data, Constellations help build on both fields, giving insight into the unique ways we interpret concepts and how that informs our choices. Compared to other cognitive tools, Constellations provides quantitative data with actionable implications and can be administered to wide audiences, allowing for intensive data collection. Most importantly, interpreting results remains in the hands of the facilitator, ensuring technology is only a tool, not a replacement for human creativity. These attributes make the tool easy to apply to the design process, but the implications of using visuals to measure associations extend further than creative fields. Our review suggests that visual mapping creates a clear bridge for the perceptual gap, and while Constellations cannot quite read minds, visual perception mapping offers unique insight into how we might continue to uncover and measure the mystery of the unconscious mind.

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