Article:3 Design Principles To Help Your Audience Remember You

From unthinkMedia

based on http://www.vanseodesign.com/web-design/depth-of-processing/

Understanding cognitive informational processes and how they apply to design, is very important when deciding to design any type of application. Through these visual designs our ultimate goal is to communicate our message to our audience. Simply receiving your message is may not be enough to be able to insure that a user comprehends and is able to recall it later.

This article show 3 useful design principles.

Contents

Depth of Processing

is the idea that information that is analyzed deeply is better understood and recalled than information that is analyzed superficially.

example

  1. Group A reads words.
  2. Group B reads words, looks up definitions, and create sentences using the words.
  3. Who remembers the most words?

methods of processing

  • Maintenance rehearsal: repeat information as it is presented with no additional analysis. Repeating a phone number back to yourself.
  • Elaborative rehearsal: elaborating on the information making it more meaningful. This includes reading an article and then reflecting on the article via a blog post or some other outlet.

In these two options, elaborating on information shows 2-3 times improvement on recall (says who?)

insights

  • Distinctiveness of the information: The uniqueness of the information in regards to it's surrounding and prior exposure.
  • Relevance of the information: The more relevant the information is the the individual interacting with it, the more likely they will spend more time processing the information.
  • Degree to which the information is elaborated: The more cognitive process required to interpret and understand the information the more deeply it will be analyzed.

possible applications

  • Giving a consumer of your media and unique presentation of information
  • Offering them access to activities that apply this information
  • Creating incentives to think about the content
  • Keep you audience active not passive.
  • Provide formative/summative assessments
  • Make information more relevant to the person interacting with it.
  • Take a more user-centered approach to the information, and show how it affects them, not you.
  • Show them how it applies to their lives, and possibly how understanding this content will make their lives better.
  • Add use cases to show how this information deeply affected others in similar situations.
  • Communicate core message early, slowly adding in details. This will let them know what you content is about right from the start giving them a good first impression, and a basic understanding of what to expect from this interaction.
  • Keep it multimodal, adding video or audio to reinforce you content. The more ways you present your idea, the more access points they have for later recall.


von Restorff effect

This principle states that things that stand out and are noticeably different are remembered more frequently. This is due to the increased attention paid to something noticeably unfamiliar.

  • red
  • orange
  • YELLOW
  • blue

In the example above it is likely that, in the list of colors presented, YELLOW has the most chance of being recalled latter due to it's unique styling.

Please note that by increasing the emphasis of one piece of information, you are decreasing the emphasis of it's surrounding information. This could have a negative effect in some cases

This also works with physical interactions, such as we remember the 1st day at a new job, but probably not the 3rd day.

The ability to stand out from competitive information is important when developing a brand identity, and all your competition select a certain style, color scheme, etc. By breaking the convention, your design gains more exposure.

Personal Note: More exposure does not necessarily mean a better interaction if the design is not functional.

takeaway

  • Do something noticeably different so the most important elements in your design grab attention and are remembered.
  • Make sure to do an in-depth competitive analysis of your competition. See where they all your competition converges in terms of design and interaction. See where there are areas to stand out from the crowd.

chunking

Chunking derives from the Millar's idea of the mind being able to contain 7 pieces of information +- 2. In this design principle, many items are combined into limited groups ("chunks") of less items to make it easier to process and remember.

This is an examples of how chuncking allows for remembering information better

  • Phone numbers: (212) 555-1212
  • Social Sec: 321-78-9753

warning

Chunking information is not always the best policy. In interaction that do not involve memory, such as scanning a search results, or a dictionary, chunking is not needed. By chunking reference material, you are adding unnecessary hurdles for the user making it more difficult and time consuming to scan for any single item.

takeaway

Chunking is great in certain situation, however might need the support of other design principles for others that rely mainly on scanning reference material.

Some ideas are:

  • Use contrasting heading for each group
  • Organize information into a hierarchy

This allows for users to quickly scan groups to filter some of the noise before they start scanning for their content.

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