Each day consumers are bombarded with 16,000 advertisements (Alrey, 2010), designers must find unique ways to stand out, connect emotionally, and hold the attention of viewers. Attention is a process requiring a number of cognitive pathways that gives an object preferential status over all other items in the visual field (Plassmann, Ramsøy, Milosavljevic,2012; Koch, 2004). Designers must understand human visual activity, both learned and biological, to engage and effectively communicate their intended message.
Humans use their 5 senses to gather 11 million bits of information every second, however the majority of the data that is processed enters through the visual centers (Plassmann, Ramsøy, Milosavljevic,2012; Koch, 2004). Consumers make four, very predictable eye movements within the first 2.5 seconds to gather information, and are able to make product selections in as little as 313ms (Milosavljevic, Koch, and Rangel 2011; Leven, 1991; Reimann, Castaño, Zaichkowsky, and Bechara, 2012; Knutson and Bossaerts, 2007). This window of opportunity to capture attention is ever shrinking. The ‘herd learning’ and training humans have undergone also has strong influences on eye movement. Individuals, based on previous social learning, tend to look in the upper and far right of the visual field hoping to gather relevant information. (Plassmann, Ramsøy, Milosavljevic,2012; Durgin, Doyle, & Egan, 2008; Efron & Yund, 1996; Nissbet & Wilson, 1977).
Consumers make four, very predictable eye movements within the first 2.5 seconds to gather information, and are able to make product selections in as little as 313ms
LET’S SEE SOME DATA ON THAT
Three ground breaking studies applied previous knowledge from neuroscience to modern web sites to test the ability to manipulate visual activity by making certain digital aspects more salient than others. In doing this, researchers were able to show that by only changing the brightness and location of content they were able to influence viewer behavior and memory. Their results coincided with the previous research, by finding that items brighter in color (compared to the rest of the web page) or displayed in areas of the visual field that humans had been trained to look for relevant information received more attention (Milosavljevic, 2009; Milosavljevic & Cerf, 2008; Dreze & Hussherr, 2003; Koch and Niebur, 1998).
The viewer’s brain, based on previously learned information, unconsciously prepares the visual pathway to quickly discard irrelevant material and fixate on a legitimate solution. (Chartrand, Huber, Shiv, & Tanner, 2008) By considering both internal and external states, the eyes become biased to the colors and shape of relevant objects. The consumer’s visual pathway becomes increasingly sensitive to a specific set of relevant stimuli, when this desired set of information enters the visual field, the designer has now captured the consumer’s attention. (Plassmann, Ramsøy, Milosavljevic,2012; Milosavljevic, Koch, and Rangel, 2011; Milosavljevic, Navalpakkam, Koch, & Rangel, 2011; Wolfe & Horowitz, 2004; Van Zoest, Donk, & Theeuwes, 2004). If a display does not provide any relevant information, users simply move to a different site rather than attempting to dig for answers.
CREATING A DESIGN THAT WORKS
All major areas necessary for action and of most importance are brightly colored.
Provide a responsive design offering a multitude of options that interact with visitor activity.
Icon features that expand and define what icon means as user hovers over it will create a feeling of control and authorship.
Sortable icons on right side that offer a number of options in a simplistic, organized manner.
expanding drop down menus and footer keeps design ‘clean’ and simplistic so as to not overwhelm the visitor by presenting them with info that isn’t relevant to them.
Design is shape based (picture, icons, statistics), allowing the visitor to gather information quickly without having to process language. Words take the most brain activity, and therefore time to process. Users gather information by shape and color before text.
Use positioning and brightness of color to influence visitor eye movements and behavior.
Major information is placed along the top and right side of the design
Logo in top right or center of design
Mega topics in top tool bar that drop down and expand based on user hovering
Most important, action call is positioned in top right, the area visitor eye movement will be most natively concentrated.
Mission statement is headed with bright color and will attract attention to inform visitor about the purpose behind design.
Social Media is positioned in bottom right and colored brightly to attract attention and encourage interaction, without dominating the design.
Multi-word headings or areas requiring lots of text are organized into icons to increase recall and ease of navigation.
WHY DOES THIS MATTER
Users, shockingly, interact with Brands by using them. These places of interaction are called TOUCHPOINTS, and range from letterheads, to websites, to product design, to communication. There are many touchpoints that are unique to each Brand that managers need to consider, because the consumer is making connections, or ,isn’t at all of them. Designers hate feeling ‘boxed’ in, and the last thing we would ever advise is becoming predictable or repetitive with your creative work. What we are suggesting is integrating these PROVEN elements into your design so that your art isn’t just beautiful, it’s effective. A list of particularly informative studies are referenced in this article and cited below, the papers from Milosavljevic and colleagues (Reference #10-12) are fantastic in pointing out the psychological and neurophysiological elements in impactful design.
REFERENCES
Alrey, David. (2010). Logo Design Love: A Guide to Creating Iconic Brand Identities. New Riders. Berkley, CA.
Chartrand, T. L., Huber, J., Shiv, B., & Tanner, R. J. (2008). Nonconscious goals and consumer choice. Journal of Consumer Research, 35(2), 189–201.
Dreze, X., & Hussherr, F. -X. (2003). Internet advertising: Is anybody watching? Journal of Interactive Marketing, 17(4), 8–23.
Durgin, F. H., Doyle, E., & Egan, L. (2008). Upper-left gaze bias reveals competing search strategies in a reverse Stroop task. Acta Psychologica, 127(2), 428–448.
Efron, R., & Yund, E. W. (1996). Spatial nonuniformities in visual search.Brain and Cognition, 31(3), 331–368.
Koch, C. (2004). Quest for consciousness: A neurobiological approach. Englewood, CO: Roberts & Company Publishers.
Koch, C., Niebur, E. (1998) A Model of Saliency-Based Visual Attention for Rapid Scene Analysis, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, Vol. 20, No. 11, pp. 1254-1259.
Knutson, B., & Bossaerts, P. (2007). Neural antecedents of financial decisions. Journal of Neuroscience, 27(31), 8174–8177.
Leven, W. (1991). Blickverhalten von Konsumenten. Grundlagen, Messung und Anwendung in der Werbeforschung. Heidelberg: Physica Verlag.
Milosavljevic, M., & Cerf, M. (2008). First attention then intention: Insights from computational neuroscience of vision. International Journal of Advertising, 27(3), 381–398.
Milosavljevic, M., Koch, C., & Rangel, A. (2011). Consumers can make choices in as little as a third of a second. Judgment and Decision Making, 6(6), 520–530.
Milosavljevic, M. (2009). Computational modeling of visual attention and consumer research: Initial allocation of visual attention and its effects on consumer behavior. Saarbruecken, Germany: VDM Verlag.
Nissbet, R. E., & Wilson, T. D. (1977). Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. Psychological Review, 84, 231–259.
Plassmann, Ramsøy, Milosavljevic. (2012). Branding the brain: A critical review and outlook. Journal of Consumer Psychology 22, 18–36.
Reimann, Castaño, Zaichkowsky, Bechara. (2012). How we relate to brands: Psychological and neurophysiological insights into consumer–brand relationships. Journal of Consumer Psychology 22, 128–142.
Van Zoest, W., Donk, M., & Theeuwes, J. (2004). The role of stimulus-driven and goal-driven control in saccadic visual selection. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 30(4), 746–759.
Wheeler, Alina. (2009). Designing Brand Identity. John Wiley and Sons. Hoboken, New Jersey.
Wolfe, J. M., & Horowitz, T. S. (2004). What attributes guide the deployment of visual attention and how do they do it? Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 5(6), 495–501.