This video delves into the science behind screens as a communication medium. By collaborating with UCL and Durham University, we explore how screens tap into subconscious cognition and amplify messages, providing insights for more meaningful usage.

Understanding the Power of Screens in Communication

So a couple of years ago, I wanted to start to explore more the science around screens and how they actually work as a communication medium, because I think we all accept it. We understand that big screens kind of work, but do we really know why? I think the advertising industry does that because they've already put those big screens out there, but we wanted to go deeper. So we contacted UCL and Durham University in the UK and spoke to their neuroscience and behavioural science teams and asked them to go and look at the existing research that was out there and collate that into white papers for us to give us insight about how we can use screens in a more meaningful way. And they're really worth reading both of those white papers, but some of the main takeaways really were that screens tap into our subconscious cognition. So most of the communication we get goes straight away, an alert just comes straight into our brain, and we'll fully forget that in about five minutes if you were cramming for a test the night before and can't remember anything a week later. Your eyes are picking up a lot more through information than you realise, and that's going into your subconscious memory. And that really is a deeper, more powerful memory, but requires a lot of repetition to get in there. And so screens in your environment with pushing those messages out kind of ambiently amplify them. They're also stimulating your cortex. So it's a big luminous box, you can't help but look at the screen. And therefore, even if you think you weren't looking at the message, you probably were, even for a microsecond. So there's a huge amount about this, there's other interesting ideas about the size of the screen, feeling that the information is more important. So a bigger screen is more important than a smaller screen. Because there's a kind of natural social hierarchy, if we make something big, it's because it's important. And loads of other tips like that, they're all very obvious when you hea

I argue that screens currently rank below email, video conferencing, and instant messaging in corporate communications because they're not being used properly. As luminous boxes that tap into subconscious cognition, strategically-deployed screens should be fundamental communication tools.

Maximising the Impact of Digital Screens in Communication

Are screens as important as email to most companies? The answer is no. Email is probably at the top, video conferencing number two, maybe number three would be instant messaging on Slack or Teams, etc. Screens are probably the slightly awkward cousin you have to invite to Christmas of the communication mix, and that's because they're not being used properly. However, they are big, bright, luminous boxes which attract our attention and tap into our subconscious cognition. So done right, screens should be a fundamental part of the communication mix, but it does mean you need to do them correctly and really think about your strategy and what you're trying to communicate to your audience when and where. And that's what we're trying to achieve with these videos so that one day screens are as important as email.

I explore how Tesla's autopilot AI, trained entirely on visual input, mirrors how humans learn through sight. This parallel demonstrates why visual communication through digital signage is so powerful for engaging our subconscious cognition.

Harnessing Visual Learning in Digital Signage

AI is a super hot topic right now and all of those new large language models are being trained on data publicly available from the internet. However, one of the more mature AI models is actually Tesla's autopilot. This is the model that helps autocorrect and drive the car. Now this model was trained exclusively on camera input, so it's visually trained. Elon explains why. I mean humans are photons in, controls out. The vast majority of information reaching our brain is from our eyes. And so what's the output? The output is our motor signals to our fingers and mouth in order to communicate. So what Elon is getting at here is that as humans we learn a huge amount through our eyes. Think of a small child. Before they can speak, before they can read, they are learning very visually and picking up a whole sense of what the world is really all about and then seeing how people are reacting to that. So in Tesla's case, by filming drivers, just having live inputs of film as they're on the road, we can begin to learn that's a bicycle, that's a potential hazard, we need to slow down now. All of this was done visually without having to feed data into the model. Digital science kind of works pretty similar, right? It's visual, going into our subconscious cognition in the right environment. We learn so much more than we realize through our eyes than necessarily by what we're told to read and think about.