Design Tips

We’ve all seen bad websites…you know what I’m talking about…the ones that instantly give you a headache! Sort of like this:

From: A Truly Awful PowerPoint Presentation – http://www.slideshare.net/NickHopwood/a-truly-awful-powerpoint-presentation

This type of graphic creates something called “Cognitive Overload” (Fenesi, B., 2011; Mayer, R. E., & Moreno, R., 2003).

Cognitive Overload happens because your brain is trying to process all the information on the screen but there is just TOO MUCH going on.

Your brain will automatically decide what information it can take in and filter out everything else.

Your brain also craves images. In fact, your brain can process images 60,000 times faster than text! So your brain can scan images and process information faster than if there is a block of text to read.

So instead of using this image to explain cognitive overload:

You could use an image like this:

TIPS TO KEEP IN MIND:

Make your graphics prominent, and meaningful.
Use very little text. Write out what you would like to say and then go back and remove every single word that is not absolutely necessary.
Don’t use too many bullets.
Use multimedia where appropriate

Check out some examples of Beautiful websites!

more info about why the brain loves images:

From: http://www.edudemic.com/13-reasons-your-brain-craves-infographics/

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