As John Medina states in Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School; vision trumps all other senses. If you want learners to recall your message, use images any time they are appropriate. According to Dr. Medina, when information is presented orally, people remember about 10 percent when tested 72 hours after exposure. That figure goes up to 65 percent if you add a meaningful image.
There’s more to designing effective training than just including images for the sake of having them. The images must have a purpose.
What Didactic Images and Visual Models Can Accomplish
- Demonstrate appearance — If your target audience needs to identify an object or differentiate among similar items, a visual representation makes the appearance concrete rather than abstract.
- Example: This is a tarantula.
Source: Wikimedia Commons/Rafael Cerpa
- Example: This is a tarantula.
- Depict relationships — Visual depictions of relationships improve understanding of concepts that are unclear when described with words. Relationships can show how various elements under consideration relate to one another. Charts and graphs make it relatively easy to interpret large amounts of data.
- Example: This is the amount of popcorn you should put in a bowl for a medium size order.
- Example: This is how you should hold the wrench.
- Example: The height of black cherry trees in this region shows a normal distribution.
Source: Wikimedia Commons/Ryan, T. A., Joiner, B. L. and Ryan, B. F. (1976) The Minitab Student Handbook. Duxbury Press.
- Example: This is the amount of popcorn you should put in a bowl for a medium size order.
- Correlate data in multiple dimensions — Demonstrating a relationship between multiple dimensions (such as space and time) can lead to increased understanding.
- Example: Edward Tufte has described Charles Joseph Minard’s representation of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812 as one of the best depictions of statistical information. It shows the size of the army, geographic locations, time progression, and climate changes.
- Example: Edward Tufte has described Charles Joseph Minard’s representation of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812 as one of the best depictions of statistical information. It shows the size of the army, geographic locations, time progression, and climate changes.
- Depict procedures and processes — Procedures are often depicted in a step-by-step sequence. It can be done with a series of still photographs, with live action video, through illustration, or with animation.
- Example: This is how to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).
Source: Wikimedia Commons/Rama - Example: This is how you position the needle for a choroidal melanoma biopsy.
- Example: This is how you replace a fan cowl in a BMW.
- Example: This is how to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).
- Show changes over time — Live action video and animations are particularly effective for showing changes over time.
- Example: This shows how a girl changes in the first 12 years of her life.
Example: This shows how one woman changed throughout her pregnancy.
Nine Months from Jesse Beecher on Vimeo.
- Represent abstract concepts — Concepts are easier to understand if you can draw an analogy or help a person create a mental model.
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Example: In Design for How People Learn, Julie Dirksen shows how a subject matter expert conceives a topic in a neatly ordered mental model (a closet).
A novice lacks the framework for making sense out of the same concept and has a confused mental model.
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- Synthesize information — Visual content curation applies the same collection and filtering principles as any other content curation.
- Example: Diabetic pathology manifests in multiple ways in the eye. A person would have to look at many different eyes to see all the types of pathology. However, an illustration can serve as a composite, allowing the viewer to see numerous instances in one concise image rather than looking at many different sources.
- Example: Diabetic pathology manifests in multiple ways in the eye. A person would have to look at many different eyes to see all the types of pathology. However, an illustration can serve as a composite, allowing the viewer to see numerous instances in one concise image rather than looking at many different sources.
- Solve spatial problems — Visualizing form and physical relationships allows us to recognize patterns and determine how elements of a puzzle fit together.
- Example: FoldIt is a computer game where players manipulate three dimensional models of amino acid chains (the building blocks of proteins) to solve fundamental structural mysteries and ultimately use the solutions to support advances in health and the treatment of disease by determining the structure of proteins.
- Example: FoldIt is a computer game where players manipulate three dimensional models of amino acid chains (the building blocks of proteins) to solve fundamental structural mysteries and ultimately use the solutions to support advances in health and the treatment of disease by determining the structure of proteins.
Principles for Effective Use of Graphics in Training
Richard Mayer is the author of multiple books on the use of media in learning materials. He has five principles that apply to the effective use of visuals in training.
- Multimedia principle: People learn better from words and pictures than from pictures alone.
- Temporal contiguity principle: People learn better when corresponding words and pictures are presented simultaneously rather than successively.
- Spatial contiguity principle: People learn better when corresponding words and pictures are presented near each other rather than far from each other.
- Coherence principle: People learn better when extraneous material is excluded rather than included. (Keep it simple. Include only what the target audience needs to know.)
- Modality principle: People learn better from animation and narration than from animation and onscreen text.
Wrap Up
As John Medina says in Brain Rules, we learn better through pictures than we do through written or spoken words.
Visuals use color, tone, shape, form, pattern, proximity, and texture to convey information. Our brains are well structured to process this information and in fact, a much greater portion of the human brain is devoted to processing visual information than to processing auditory information.
Here are a few things to keep in mind about images:
- Visuals are easier to understand than text.
- Visuals (without labels) have no language barriers.
- Visuals don’t need to be complex to be effective. When deciding on the level of complexity, consider the existing knowledge of your target audience. For novices, it is particularly important to avoid extraneous details.
- The more visual your material, the more likely it is to be recognized and recalled.
Resources
- Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School by John Medina
- e-Learning and the Science of Instruction by Ruth Colvin Clark and Richard Mayer
- The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte
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