Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School
John Medina's Brain Rules is a fantastic resource to learn more about how the brain works; Medina's book is research-based and shares helpful information that can help of understand and care for our brain. Additional, Medina shares many hints that can help inform instructional designers on methods they can employee to be more effective instructional designers. One of my favorite principles or rules from the book was that of vision.
Rule 10 - Vision trumps every other sense
John Medina says it best from the following excerpts I found on the Brain Rules website:
- "We are incredible at remembering pictures. Hear a piece of information, and three days later you'll remember 10% of it. Add a picture and you'll remember 65%."
- "Pictures beat text as well, in part because reading is so inefficient for us. Our brain sees words as lots of tiny pictures, and we have to identify certain features in the letters to be able to read them. That takes time."
- "Why is vision such a big deal to us? Perhaps because it's how we've always apprehended major threats, food supplies and reproductive opportunity."
- "Toss your PowerPoint presentations. It’s text-based (nearly 40 words per slide), with six hierarchical levels of chapters and subheads—all words. Professionals everywhere need to know about the incredible inefficiency of text-based information and the incredible effects of images. Burn your current PowerPoint presentations and make new ones."
Employing vision in design
I gave what I learned in Brain Rules a try. I incorporated a number of images into my latest LinkedIn Pulse post entitled, "Master Latin abbreviations in your writing, e.g., i.e., et al., etc." Have a look at the post to see how I tied in examples with relevant imagery.