Elicitation of Rules for Graphic Design Evaluation

Abstract

This paper reports a set of experiments in which graphic design rules were elicited from two graphic design experts. In these experiments no attempt is made to judge a design to be ‘good’, but the rules are sufficient to diagnose a design as ‘bad’. The experiments show that graphic design rules can be elicited from expert graphic designers in a sufficiently explicit way for them to become operational in a computerised expert system. The experiments show that the graphic design experts do not apply their rules consistently, but when the rules are made explicit they agree entirely with the diagnosis of the rule based system. These experiments therefore support the thesis that there are rules governing the aesthetics of graphic design, as perceived by practising graphic designers, which can be implemented on computers. These rules may not guarantee ‘good’ design but may assist the novice to produce designs which are ‘not bad’.