Background: As data volume grows, the utility of business intelligence dashboards is increasingly limited not by computational power, but by human perceptual bandwidth. While data visualization literature is robust, there remains a disconnect between modern interface design and foundational psychophysics.

Methods: This study investigates the application of mid-20th-century psychophysical theories—specifically preattentive processing, spatial frequency selectivity, and transient masking—to modern dashboard design. We conducted a controlled experiment (N=140) utilizing a visual search paradigm. Participants performed detection and localization tasks across two conditions: a control condition mimicking standard high-density layouts and an experimental condition optimized according to principles derived from Gibson, Julesz, and Green.

Results: Quantitative analysis revealed a statistically significant reduction in reaction times (p < .001) and error rates in the optimized condition. Specifically, designs leveraging preattentive attributes (textons) allowed for parallel processing of data points, whereas standard designs forced serial search. Furthermore, misapplication of transient signals (flashing alerts) was found to induce masking effects that degraded the retrieval of sustained information.

Conclusion: The findings suggest that effective data visualization requires a rigorous adherence to the physiological limits of the visual cortex. We propose that future dashboard heuristics must prioritize "perceptual affordance" over information density, treating the user’s visual system as an active sampling mechanism rather than a passive channel.

Psychophysics, Preattentive Processing, Data Visualization, Visual Search

The Psychology of Visual Perception in Data Dashboards: Designing for Impact. (2025). International Journal of Data Science and Machine Learning, 5(02), 79-86.

https://doi.org/10.55640/ijdsml-05-02-07

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