Psychological Considerations When Creating A

Media Presentation
Assembling all your assets, organizing them and editing them into optimal
condition, then preparing them for safe, long term storage is a critical task. Once
all these assets are accessible and ready for use, you need to stratagize how the
material will be presented to upcoming viewers. You may decide that you don't
necessarly just want to present a huge block of data. Following are several
recommendations on how to make your creation the most appealing and watchable.
Your brain is segmented into three fairly independent entities. These work largely on a subconscious
level and not always in harmony with each other. The old brain is interested in your survival, the
mid processes emotions, and new which is the conscious, reasoning, logical brain. Realizing there
are three distinct processing centers, each with their own agendas, making up or mind, then the reason
for the wide range of behavior we exhibit becomes more evident.
If you are creating a presentation, be careful to break it into bite size portions and disclose it
progressively. If you throw it all out at once, people balk and leave. As on websites, people don't
mind making multiple clicks to navigate the progressive disclosure, but they will quickly leave a site
that shows all the content at once.
Mental models are created fairly quickly, are often inaccurate, and are subject to change, yet they are
powerful drivers in someone's understanding and acceptance. Conceptual models need to
accommodate whatever the mental model expectations happen to exist, or there is confusion or a
disconnect. Good designers understand prevailing mental models and adapt their conceptual models to
create interest and involvement, then adapt the mental model to an alternate reality in harmony with the
conceptual model.
If you are running a promotion, enticing people to participate in something or purchase; several things
come into play. The shorter the distance to the goal, the more motivation will occur. Motivation can
come with even the illusion of progress. People enjoy being part of a reward program and are more
amicable. Motivation and purchases plummet after the goal is reached and there is even considerable
reluctance to go for a second level reward.
People see what they expect to see and often fail to see the unexpected. This means you can't expect
your audience to see the same thing that you do, so you need to set a mood and include subtle
instructions as to what to look for.
Stories are very powerful ways of cultivating interest, as well as enhancing assimilation of information.
They are highly effective in promoting communication. If you structure your production as some sort

of a story, it will immediately gain and hold interest. If you appear to be presenting a large quantity of
data, the viewer's interest will just as quickly shut down and flee.
When presented with a situation, the old brain usually draws a conclusion fairly quickly and is trying to
detect possible loss or danger and will steer us toward taking less risk. The conscious mind eventually
catches up and is able to articulate a reasonable position. Understanding and accomodating this
phenomenon can build a better purchaser, salesman, administrator, etc.
People tend to focus on parts of an image and connections within an image which they are given subtle
instructions to look at.
People greatly overestimate the reaction they think they will have to both pleasant and unpleasant
events that happen in their life. Changes accompanied by high expectations often will not have the
results expected. The sustained power and duration of the expectation is often considerably flawed
and much overrated.
Peripheral vision is more important than we might realize in that it helps in overall analyzing a scene
while the central vision focuses on detail. This also accounts for why something moving or flashing
along the border of a web page is so irritating while we try to concentrate on the core information.
A little stress or mental arousal increases performance up to a point, but if the stress becomes
excessive, the performance decreases rapidly. Simple tasks require more arousal, but don't fall off as
fast. When arousal first goes up, there is an energizing effect, but if the stress increases, attention gets
unfocused, tunnel vision sets in, and obvious mistakes start being repeated. So, if your presentation
might require participation by person under stress, tailor it to be seen in a simpler, calmer structure.

People commonly have inattention blindness or change blindness and often miss significant alterations
in their visual field. Just because something is in an image on a screen doesn't mean that people are
aware of it.
Mirror neurons light up in our brains when we see images of someone doing something, just as if we
were doing the activity. This helps us to understand, creates empathy, and influences behavior.
Stories trigger mirror neurons. Videos of an activity promotes the viewer to want to become involved.
Dunbar number of 150 is a suggestion of how many people survive best in strong, stable relationships
in a fairly close proximity. The trend now is toward many more distant and casual relationships. If
we don't feel a tie to a tribe surrounding us, we start to rely on a network of social media to feel
connected, yet that eventually becomes unfullfilling and unproductive.

Your most vivid memories are notoriously wrong. Vivid does not equate with accurate. What you need
to realize is that your brain is constantly recreating memories, not just pulling them intact from a file.
Your mind is entirely capable of putting a heavy dose of vivid on an entirely unrelated clip used
erroneously in recreating a memory.
The more mental processing involved in an activity, the longer it seems to take, but they are less
distressed if they can see where they are at in the process. People like progress indicators and work
better with activities which are broken into several steps.
If people are put in a mood of fear, loss, or problems, they tend to buy familiar brands. If they are put
in a fun, light mood, they will respond much better to new product brands. If you are in a good mood
and/or are making a complicated decision it is best to trust your intuition. If you are in a bad mood
and/or are making a simple decision then use a more deliberative process.
If you show westerners an image, they tend to focus on the dominant foreground object, while Asians
first focus on the background and context. Asians who grow up in the west exhibit the western pattern,
so this is a function of culture, not genetics.
It is usually worthwhile to place the most critical information above the fold. People will progress
below the fold if what they have seen thus far entices them.
The more uncertain you are, the more you dig in to defend your position. If we have two ideas in
conflict that causes discomfort, then information will be denied or belief altered. Often, if not forced to
confront a belief bolstered with conflicting information, there is a tenancy to discard the information
rather than alter the belief. This may mean that if we want to cultivate a loyal advocate, we should give
them some reason for uncertainty.
Our minds wander more than we think. People tend to think they are wandering about 10% of the time,
but it is actually more like 30% to 70%. This can be productive, efficient and creative if it used well,
but if it just zoning out, it is counter-productive. A production or web page may attempt to just capture
someone's attention, but may more effectively encourage wandering all through the content and related
ideas.
Synchronous activities promote cooperation within a group, making personal sacrifices, and a
strengthened social attachment; even though for a cause they might not feel particularly good about.
People make mistakes, so they should anticipate the possibilities, create prototypes, test the prototype
with users, and show how errors can be corrected. Take a straightforward approach to avoiding and
correcting mistakes. The more costly errors can be, exert much more effort in redundant strategies to
detect them.

Many people lean toward accumulating what is adequate rather than optimal. They don't want to
waste resources and energy by spending too much time running around getting stuff. Decisions on
what is good enough, or what will do is somewhat driven by laziness and the inability to make a
complete analysis of all the options. Consequently, you may want to design presentations which lend
themselves to scanning rather than a comprehensive acquisition. People like shortcuts and defaults.
The research shows that it is very hard to stop making the fundamental attribution error. This relates to
ascribing a personality defect to someone's action rather than situational factors. Even when you know
you are doing it, and even if you know all about the situation, you will still make the same error. It
probably has to do with us wanting to feel we have more control of our lives.
Our desire to control is related to the desire for lots of choices, yet when presented with lots of choices,
we tend to not choose at all. This is a critical insight in designing sales situations, advertising, opinion
formation, etc.
We tend to have expectations of interactions, whether personal, cultural, or internet, and these need to
not be confused. The timing and way you present or ask for information will dictate the success of
your project or website.
There is a tenancy to look to others to help us decide what to do. The more uncertain we are the more
we will look to social validation. People often pay attention to testimonials or reviews from people like
themselves rather than experts. Telling a story is a powerful because it engages our mid or emotional
mind.
Order effect is very pervasive, the first person on a ballot has an edge, and the first item on a product
page has about double the chance of being purchased from items of similar attributes. There is an
unconscious reaction to what comes up first.
100 characters per line is optimal for on screen reading speed, but people prefer more like 45
It used to be thought that people can usually only process or remember 7 plus or minus 2 items at a
time, but further research shows more realistically the numbers are three or four. People have trouble
choosing between more than 3 or 4 items at a time, so components of a presentation should be chunked
in 3 to 4 items. Keep tabs or navigation options to three or four.
Our minds are very attuned to a canonical perspective, so if your production has something that is
outside this convention, you need to provide some introduction and conditioning.
We tend to think of many of our decisions, such as purchases, as deliberate, contemplated, researched,

etc. but most often the decision is unconscious and driven by social validation, persona commitment, or
obligations or social debts. This is the mind's method of working with what is otherwise an
overwhelming amount of data, and is often in our best interest. This process should be recognized and
accommodated in presentations or websites.
Our memories are actually reconstructed every time we think of them. They arent movie clips that are
stored in the brain in a certain location like files on a hard drive. They are nerve pathways that are
firing anew each time we remember the event. This says that memories can and do change. Memories
tend to mix and gaps are filled in. Accompanying language or scene setting can effect the memory.
Eyewitness recollections are notoriously flawed because they are reconstructed.
We can't multi-task; we can only do one thing at a time, but we think we can because we are able to
switch rapidly. The exception is that you can do a physical task you are very good at, as well as a
mental task, such as in walking and talking. Switching is not the best and multiple streams of
information tend to not be processed well.
Dopamine compels us to seek, search, want, desire, etc. Arousal of the dopamine production can lead
to a prolonged involvement. Brain scan research shows that our brains show more stimulation
and activity when we anticipate a reward than when we get one. Consequently, we can get into what
appears to be an addictive behavior in looking up information, texting, checking social sites, and all
that. The dopamine systems tends to not be satisfied, but wanting more and more. It is stimulated by
unpredictability, cues and bits of information that are too small to be satisfying. Getting caught in a
dopamine loop can become exhausting.
Red and blue together appear very irritating; red and green to a lesser extent. Avoid using them,
especially as in red text on blue background. Another very irritating effect is a white flash in transition
between images; going to black is no problem. A presentation without audio comes across as
unappealing and sterile, but poor audio can be the death of a production. For some reason, people will
tolerate low quality video and images, but will not tolerate poor audio.
Society shows a fairly well defined separation into three generational groups; the Boomers born
between 43 and 61, the Gen X'ers born from 61 to 81, and the Millenials, born between 82 and 02.
Their characteristics are pronounced and well entrenched. Also, the younger generation does not age
into similarity with the older generation. Technology is a tool to the boomers, but it is an implied way
of life to the Millenials. Gen X'ers are the most enamored with technology but feel trapped by it.
Boomers hate things that move or scroll on a page, and will abandon a website because of it. Gen X'ers
will tolerate such features, but Millenials get bored without them. Millenials want a website to be
interesting, fun, cool, and active. Gen X'ers can do without the fun, and Boomers want just a
straightforward functional useful tool. Gen X'ers prefer Twitter, Millenials like Facebook, and
Boomers are bewildered. There are about as many Boomers as Millenials, but only about half as many
Gen X'ers as either of those groups. The Gen X'ers are doing most of the web design but not as
content taylored for their generation due to market requirements. Millenials are most concerned about
how people look, especially regarding age. They are turned off by a model or feature that looks old.

People insist they want lots of choices, but if confronted with too many choices, they often freeze and
do nothing. Even in addressing lots of choices, they usually try only three or four. If they are
confronted with less choices, they are many times more likely to purchase. This has to do with the
dopamine effect where they don't stop seeking until they have encountered more and more choices.
Consumers should realize what the dopamine effect is and limit their searches to three or four and then
make a decision. Retailers should present items in smaller groups, such as fours instead of dozens.
If you are trying to break a habit, make the process fun, unpredictable, and try to gain social validation.
Abundant research has shown that text on a screen, due to luminescence is somewhat difficult to read,
so to make your presentation work best by incorporating the following: Keep text short, accentuate it
with bullets, pictures, and add space between it and the next paragraph. Use black text on white if
possible, a simple font and a fairly large font. Distill the content down to the most interesting because
it is most likely to just be scanned anyway.
When the product is actually available, that acts as a conditioned stimulus and elicits a response. The
images and even text could become a conditioned stimulus and produce the same response, but they
have not been set up in the brain to trigger the same response as the actual item. If an actual item is
within reach, people will tend to pay much more for it than by selecting with text or a picture, even if
they are very familiar with the article such as potato chips as an example.
Our brain is constantly interpreting everything it sees, and this is not necessarily what our eyes are
seeing. This is evident in that most people can read the following without a lot of problem. Aoccdrnig
to research at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, the oredr of lteetrs in a wrod is nto vrey iprmoetnt. Waht mttaers
is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The ohter letetrs can be a ttoal mses and you can sitll
raed wthuot mcuh probelm. Tihs is bcauseae yuor brian deos not raed ervey lteter, but raeds wrods and
gruops of wrods. Our brains make shortcuts, extrapolates, and takes guesses in order to process all the
rush of inputs coming at us every second. Most of the time it works. By cleverly using things such as
placement or colors you can steer your viewer to create the impression you desire.
Use patterns as much as possible, since people will automatically be looking for them. Use grouping
and white space to create patterns. If you want people to recognize an object quickly, use a simple
geometric drawing of the object. This will make it easier to recognize the underlying geons, and thus
make the object easier and faster to recognize. Its thought that there are 24 basic shapes that
people recognize, and that these shapes are the building blocks of the objects we see and identify.
Colors can have different meanings in different cultures, and colors can invoke different values, so
consider the colors you choose in productions for your target audience.
Your brain is almost as active during sleep as when you are awake. It is doing all the processing,
consolidating, and organizing of what it gathered in wakefulness. The best way to remember things is
sleep after you learn. Cramming is outrageously counterproductive. If you can time a presentation to

be shortly before the viewer's sleep time, it will be more efficiently assimilated.
Creativity can be either emotionally or cognitively based, and it can also be spontaneous or deliberate;
depending on what part of the brain is used. Deliberate and cognitive creativity requires a high degree
of knowledge and lots of time. Deliberate and emotional creativity requires quiet time. Spontaneous
and cognitive creativity requires stopping work on the problem and getting away. Spontaneous and
emotional creativity probably cant be designed for.
Context matters so set a mood to carry your presentation.