Using Images to Improve Processing Fluency
I discuss how images can strengthen communication and make key messages easier to process. Using a simple hard hat example, I explain how visual direction and social cues can guide attention towards the most important takeaway.
Key Takeaways
- Images should actively support the message, not simply decorate the content.
- People naturally follow visual cues, such as where someone in an image is looking.
- Directing visual attention towards the key message can increase clarity and impact.
Topics
- User Experience
- Product Design
- Cognition
Transcript
Excellent. Well, the third of the tips for improving processing fluency is actually just think about your images. Communicate with your images. It's not just about text. And here, see a very simple example. Always wear your hard hat. Four hard hats, four people. Actually, there's one tip I would give on this, which we haven't actually done in the example, is it's a little psychological trick I learned when I was doing web design. So with web design, you always have like a call to action, like the main button. Right, you go to the homepage, you see that there's the main button, like free trial or whatever it is. If your hero image, if the people in the hero image or the person in the hero image is looking in the direction of your call to action or your key thing, your eye is naturally drawn that way. So if I do that, you know, most people would go, Oh, there's something over there, and we have a social signal, which is like, Oh, look, he's looked at something, so maybe I should look at that too. And so if you do actually format your slide with the person looking at the key thing you want them to take away from that, you will create more, I suppose, more value around that message.