Research streams and frontier issues of visual perception in the 21st century

Abstract Visual perception has always been the focus in design research. In order to systematically summarize the research streams and frontier issues related to visual perception since the beginning of twenty first century, 378 articles were retrieved under the ‘A&HCI‘ in the Web of Science Core Collection. Firstly, the research distribution of these articles is introduced, and four research streams of visual perception are identified through multi-dimensional scaling analysis, namely, ‘expert‘ research, ‘behavior‘ research, ‘expression‘ research and ‘quantization‘ research. Secondly, using the method of bibliometrics science mapping, the paper summarizes the research topics analysis of citing literature and the research community analysis of cited literature. Research directions worthy of further exploration are delineated: these are academic circle continuation, ‘hot’ new exploration, classic re-excavation and cross-field expansion. Finally, 25 frontier issues are summarized, and these provide some enlightenment for future research directions in visual perception research related to design.