Gestalt psychologists studied the act of seeing as a dynamic process involving both the viewer and the viewed. When people look at a page, a picture, a computer screen, or the environment around them, they actively organize what they see. They resolve ambiguities, impose structure, and make connections. Many of the problems in document design occur because, although the designers want the reader to see the text in one way, the structure of the text leads readers to see it differently.

Gestalt psychologists argue that people tend to impose meaning and structure on things they see. An implication of Gestalt psychology for document design is that readers may make use of all of the cues in the visual field to help them in constructing meanings for the content. If the cues are not carefully orchestrated, it is highly unlikely that readers will create the meanings for the content that the document designer intended.

But most readers will try to work with a poorly designed document for only a short period.