The display elements should be organized so that the emergent features that arise from their interaction correspond to meaningful information about the process or system, e.g., when the aspect of the system represented by the emergent is disturbed, the disturbance is visible in the emergent feature.
Additional Information:
An emergent feature is a high-level, global perceptual feature generated by interactions among individual parts or graphical elements of a display (e.g., lines, contours, and shapes) to produce perceptual properties, such as symmetries, closure, and parallelism. Displays cannot always be organized to provide emergent features, but they should be considered where feasible.