A factor of interest to molecular biologists, designers, and psychologists is the phenomenom of the smallest effective difference. For a visual designer, Tufte (1997) argures that one should “make all visual distinctions as subtle as possible, but still clear and effective.”

Tufte using a blue painting of Ad Reinhardt’s to illustrate what subtle variations can do when placed against each others’ background (figure/ground).

Psychologists measure the smallest differences in a signal or stimulation that an individual can sense.

Molecular biologists study mutations. Some mutations are synonomous and some are nonsynonomous- though synonomous occur at a higher frequency in functional regions of the genome. One question they frequently ask is what the smallest effective mutation is that will cause a perceptible change in the phenotype of an organism. Put another way, how many mutations can an asexual population accumulate before there is a detectable decrease (or increase) in it’s growth rate.

The point here is that if changes (saturation, intensity, kenetic, etc) are too small, they will have no effect on how the system is understood by the “community.” If those changes are too large, then the effects can also impair communication with a sort of “information overload.”

Tufte called the smallest effective difference the Occam’s Razor of information design.

In following this path, the differences that do get noticed form a heirarchy.

–for biologists, think of synonomous mutations versus nonsynomous mutations….

note: this is a work in progress..