brain-friendly design: how brain science can help keep readers engaged

Brain-friendly design:How brain science can help keep readers engaged

The geeky-nerdy stuffObjective

Empirically test how readers mentally engage with and respond to news design that is “Brain friendly” by aligning design to brain truths

MethodologyMedia Psychophysiology an experimental research method

using physiological indicators (heart rate and skin conductance) of attention to measure “engagement.”

More geekiness Research procedure

• 80 Adults who regularly obtain news from online sources were recruited to participate.

• Participants read 4 news stories (2 brain friendly / 2 brain unfriendly).

• Psychophysiological measures were recorded while participants read each story.

• Participants completed self-report questions measuring perceptions of the story immediately after reading each story.

We’re not done nerding you out yet

Readers more effectively engage with thematically segmented news writing.The brain only has so many resources to allocate all the mental tasks — perceiving, paying attention to, trying to remember, and learn information. It has to simultaneously shift attention and effort between the tasks. So there's a cost. For every task, there are fewer resources left to process other tasks.

Readers more effectively engage with semantically related page design.Anything that pulls processing away from the central idea of what the individual is focused on will be either frustrating or ignored. We've developed the ability to just completely tune out distracting elements. A [poorly placed] ad may get us for a moment, and evoke negative emotion (not good for an news organization wanting to build relationships), or the user is just going to block it out: banner ad blindness.

Readers engage with motivationally relevant news.In milliseconds, the brain immediately determines the motivation significance of information in our sensory environment. So, in reporting and delivering the news, journalists shouldn't be afraid of emotion. That motivates the brain to process. That signals importance. Ask: “Is there any element in here portraying emotion, such as good photographs?”

Brain-unfriendly design

Distracting elements can reduce comprehension

• Animated gifs• Odd sizes, shapes that interrupt flow• Garish colors that overpower content• Auto-play• Flyovers, takeovers, popovers, popups, swoops• Photos and links to unrelated stories

Brain-friendly design

Elements of brain-friendly design

• Formatting the text of the story into shorter paragraphs.• Highlighting important story facts and terms.• Clean, uncluttered page design.• Uninterrupted flow.• Interactions that user calls for, not autoplay• Readable type on all platforms

Want to know more?• https://www.rjionline.org/stories/how-to-make-online-news-b

rain-friendly

• https://www.rjionline.org/stories/how-do-we-improve-online-news-design-to-help-readers-better-understand-stor

• https://www.rjionline.org/stories/results-are-in-a-cleaner-webpage-design-equals-more-engaged-readers

• https://www.rjionline.org/stories/elements-of-brain-friendly-design-for-news-websites

Alex Remington: alexander.remington@washpost.com

Brian Steffens: steffensb@rjionline.org

RJI Fellows Paul Bolls (2011-2012), Barrett Golding (2015-2016)