Bouba/kiki effect

The appearance (including appearance quality ) of an object or a situation is difficult to define, rather vague effect of this phenomenon on a viewer via one or more channels of perception ( visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory ). It depends on the properties of the observed object or the trains experienced a situation, as well. Socialization of the observer and the environment in which the object is shown or the situation occurs

Originally, the word but something completely different, namely a disgrace.

Design and Art

In graphical user interface ( GUI) of computers people speak of look and feel.

Designers and artists communicate with creative means values ​​and qualities and put it at quite on subliminal impressions on. They are specially trained for the anticipation of objects by different viewers and audiences.

In the design practice is referred to by a draft aroused, often unconscious expectations with appearance. The spontaneous appearance is an important indicator of the consistency of intention and form a design. In graphic design, for example, a compelling packet of cigarettes should not seem like a cosmetic product, a logo design for a bank should not for a fast-food chain can be kept so.

Maluma and Takete

Basic research to demonstrate the quality look led by the psychologist Wolfgang Köhler, one of the founders of Gestalt psychology, 1929. Köhler presented subjects before a round and a square figure and asked them to assign the forms in which language the word Maluma or Takete. In 90 % of cases, the subjects of the round shape Maluma and the pointed shape Takete assigned to.

From this led Köhler from the evidence that there is an intuitive, emotional connection between language and visual representations, ie corresponding sounds with the perception of shapes.

Bouba and Kiki

2001 VS Ramachandran and Edward Hubbard replicated Köhler's experiment with the non- words kiki and bouba and asked Americans and Indian Tamil - speaker to assign them to the adjacent contours. In both groups, 95 % to 98 % of the associated curvy shape bouba and the jagged shape to kiki. The human brain then must connect abstract shapes and sounds in a consistent way with each other.