Perception VS Reality. Perception Wins.

This one blew me away. See the image above? Unless you suffer from *color blindness, you should see a pink spirally box with a green spiral and a blue spiral vortex. Except they're not blue and green. The large colored spirals are the same green. Really.

Here is the original posting of this illusion on BuzzHunt. And some followup analysis on Discover.

*If you have some element of color blindness, this illusion may not work, according to Vischeck. This image to the left shows what some will see.

But! Even if you suffer color blindness (statistically more likely to be caucasian male), you will be able to appreciate the image to the right. In this amazing visual illusion by Edward H. Adelson, square A and square B are the exact same color. What's even more brilliant in this one is that our visual system is making cognitively complex adjustments to perceived color based on the concept of a shadow. So much of what we think is the raw data from the real world is having massive adjustments done to it before it's passed on to our consciousness. These 'illusions' remind me that interaction design is building around perceptions, not building around reality.

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