When learning something new, no one enjoys a boring lecture or a page endlessly filled with lines of information. Somewhere between the pages of worded content or continuous dialogue, there is a point where a person’s attention tends to wander. It’s not the concepts or the explanation, because the consumer usually either wants to learn more about the topic or needs to put the information into use in the future. So why is it that they feel so disengaged from what is being shared with them?
Several factors can contribute, but the most important deciding factor here lies within core human functions. Our five human senses are used every day to achieve goals and accomplish tasks. We, as human beings, use our senses to engage with the world around us. The more we are allowed to engage with what’s being presented to us, the more focused we become, which leads to more information being retained in the long term.
How to Capture Your Audience’s Attention—and Keep It
So what can be done to retain the consumer’s attention for the long haul? How do you engage as many senses as possible virtually with your target audience? PowerPoint presentations may present the best option, but if you want to be effective at retaining your reader’s attention you’ll need to leverage visual aids to empower your conversation. Creative teams throughout the government space are well aware of how important supplementing content is to retaining attention. Agencies are leveraging images to emphasize content points, videos to present live, colorful examples and points, interesting and easy to read infographics for relaying information. Ideally, each point in your message should have one to two pieces of engaging, visual content tied to it to retain the consumer’s attention from beginning to end.
The Power of Video
As a product specialist who directly speaks to customers each day, I can attest to the value of providing live demonstrations of content; this, unfortunately, isn’t an option for most people. This simply means you can revert to the next best thing—video visual aids. Integrating video into a presentation can be done in many ways, specifically short format, and quick sample videos, and can make all the difference in the impact of your demonstration.
The Adobe Government Creativity Awards, the world’s premier creativity and design competition for government professionals, recognizes and celebrates talent and creativity in government and how agencies across the public sector are making an impact through creativity and design.
Check out entries from last year’s competition to get a sense of the projects your peers are submitting, and then take this opportunity to have your work showcased and potentially recognized with an award from Adobe in next year’s competition. To learn more, visit our competition website.
Additionally, if you or anyone you know would like to dive deeper into the Adobe creative applications and how they can be applied to current government projects, watch the on-demand recordings from our 10-part webinar series, Innovate and Inspire with Adobe Creative Cloud. Explore how Adobe is inspiring government agencies nationwide to elevate their use of creativity and design through state of the art digital solutions. Our product specialists take a deep dive into the newest tools, features, and upgrades, in efforts to increase productivity and ramp up your existing creative workspace.
