Key Takeaways

• Screens tap into subconscious cognition, enhancing message retention.
• Repetition and screen size play vital roles in memory retention.
• Big screens convey importance due to social hierarchy perceptions.

Topics

• Technology
• Neuroscience
• Communication

Transcript

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