Co.Design | business + design: Human memory is very fallible, but lately cognitive scientists have found that our minds capture much more visual detail in a moment than once believed. A 2008 paper reported that people who saw thousands of images for three seconds each over five hours later identified ones they'd seen over similar alternatives with nearly 90% accuracy. They didn't just remember that they'd seen a cracked egg, they remembered that its egg white had formed a perfectly round puddle.
13 comments:
I've always been intrigued by infographics, especially infographic style resumes....because I wonder if they're relevant and how to best use them in the job search process. if applying for a position do you submit your infographic resume? I'm sure it'd be memorable compared to the stack of dribble accumulating on the interviewer's desk by the day. But will it get you the job, or at least a phone call, or will they just think you're some jag-off who can't follow a simple set of direction and send in a regular resume? Is it the sort of thing that sits in your portfolio and collects dust that you hope will one day be a conversation starter? I think it's worth some more research and hopefully I can come up something clever enough to be a difference maker for me some day.
Ok, I'll say it. I hate infographics. I hate how they're always too small to make the connections they're trying to get you to make. I hate how the kindergarten-inspired color schemes try and vomit so much un-contextualized data at me that I shut down. I hate how they provide no documentation of their sources, so I don't know if this infographic is based on scientific research or Drunk Uncle's latest bender. I know that I am in the minority here, and different people's brains work differently, but I truly have found almost every infographic I've ever seen incomprehensible and brain-deafening.
Info graphics are something near and dear to my heart. I love the way was try to communicate complex information and relationships. Some of the science behind this article sounded very interesting and I am glad that people are thinking about communication from a scientific stand point not just artistic. Many of the ideas that this article talks about remind me of the the things that I learned this year in Olivier's nose. It is very important to think about how each part of a project is pushing forward the main goal. In the case of an info graphic, how each part of the image helps explain the big ideas.
I happened to take a look at the info graphics that were on the page as examples. I found them surprisingly interesting. For example I think it's very interesting that office 2013 has almost as many lines of code as the LHC. I also found the graphic about coffee very informative. Coffee is something that I have trouble warping my head around and this graphic really helped.
Wow, this was such a great and informative article! I really found it fascinating especially because I can apply this to one of my non-drama classes which I always think is crazy despite it happening pretty often. In Social Psychology we learned how adds, or really any type of media, can flash completely unrelated images at you and they will still be effective in getting the message across, which seems very unlikely, but is none the less true and I think this article explained exactly how that is able to work. I think this is just further proof how closely art and psychology are related, because the way we approach and analyze art is often entirely psychological, and I think having knowledge in both areas can really help artist understand what message they will get across to average audiences.
What I found interesting about this article was its reference to tumblr. I had never really though about how the website was influencing me. It is something I use for down time and spend only second looking at the images I reblog to keep, so to think that my mind is picking up much more information about what I am see was intriguing. This would beg the question to me that if this is true am I really learning at a greater rate than if I was just reading. I think that maybe reading is a conscious form of learn where as info graphics effect us on a subconscious level. I think this information should be used more to do more research to learn what is best for our brains to learn information.
I think infographics are an amazing tool to get people to understand information or the point you are trying to make. As a manager, we learned that you have to approach every person and situation differently and how people learn and accept information in individual ways. This is simply a way to communicate to those of use that are more visual learners than others. Like a mathematician wants to see a mathematical proof, sometimes a visual representation of you point can really help someone out.
I think this study is not only relevant to people who design info graphics but day to day art as well and I can definitely see how it plays into that. If you think about it, what is the ratio of memorable busy art and memorable minimalist art? Not to say that all designs should be busy but that this article definite can put a perspective on details of design.
It's definitely an intriguing view into what the human brain finds interesting enough to be memorable, and I'm sure the findings are helpful for advertisers and the like. But I agree with what Borkin is quoted as saying towards the end of the article -- in the end, what's important in an infographic is helping the reader to understand the information that is presented. Infographics are certainly more interesting to look at than plain text, and especially so from a design viewpoint, but if the information is not easily accessible the job isn't really done. Also for me personally, just thinking back at the infographics that I've seen browsing the internet, it's only really the facts that I (sometimes) recall, and I only remember them because they were interesting in and of themselves, not because they were shown in an infographic format.
Infographics are a great way to get a varied amount of information across to a wide range of people. This is because they use visuals to communicate information instead of words but what this article is saying is that infographics can only be effective if they follow certain rules. These rules are not revolutionary but more put down in writing what most people would assume.
Though this article focuses on infographics, I find the research that they did about what makes an image memorable interesting all on its own. The part about charts and graphs made sense to me, because I often cannot remember very linear things like charts. I can, however, remember more organic things, as they discussed. The struggle then becomes how to convey statistics while still making the information easy to remember. This article definitely gave some good starting places for a solution to this issue, but, I think, still left room for creativity.
Info graphics can really enhance an article. It is amazing to me the amount of information that I am able to recall if I can remember the shape of an info graphic. It has always been an interesting idea to me. This article does a good job of explaining the developments in our understanding of the ways in which information should be presented. I just wish there had been more Info graphics to explain the information in the article.
I think that infographics can be incredibly useful if they are presented in the right way. However, I think that a majority of the infographics I've seen make some of the mistakes that this article talks about. Making an image memorable seems like its harder than we think, and the fact that images with more color and more dense imagery are more memorable flies in the face of some of the things we're told about infographics: make it easily readable and don't overload it with colors: choose a cohesive color palette. Also, I think infographic resumes could be helpful, but only if they are done in the right way, and they are memorable. While doing the infographic resume project for Professional Practice, I saw a lot of infographic resumes online that were pretty much all the same: they had a timeline and a line graph and maybe a bar graph, and then some text boxes. Not super helpful if that's what everyone is doing now.
There is a lot of interesting info in this article. I do love me a good infographic so it's interesting to learn why they are so effective. I find they are a really good way to convey otherwise complicated date in a creative yet still very informative way. I found it interesting that more clutter and color made things more memorable. I guess I see why that might be in that it gives us more ways to distinguish that image from others. Too few color or pictures and it becomes easier to confuse with other things we have seen. Personally I am a very visual learner so I find infographics to be very informative and helpful.
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