Gestalt Theory and Instructional Design

Research on the visual presentation of instructions (and other texts) tends to be repetitious, unsystematic, and overly complex. A simpler yet rich approach to analyzing the visual dimension of instructions is Gestalt theory. Gestalt principles of proximity, closure, symmetry, figure-ground segregation, good continuation, and similarity provide a powerful approach to making instructions more inviting and consistent, as well as easier to access, follow, and understand. This article applies six Gestalt principles to a badly designed instruction to show what improvements result when Gestalt theory is considered in instructional design.