Visual by nature
We humans are visual beings. 90% of the information we notice and that’s transmitted to our brains is visual. It’s been important for our survival as a species to be able to quickly process and interpret visual impressions, so our brains have gotten extra good at it. Even as little babies, we learn to interpret facial expressions, body language and other visual cues. Today, 65% of people are thought to be visual learners, which means the majority of us need visual aids in order for us to best identify, understand and remember new things. Studies show that we remember 80% of what we see, 20% of what we read and 10% of what we hear. So clearly, the right visual aids are a powerful way to both capture people’s attention and to communicate information. A single image or film clip can convey much more than a detailed text block. Plus, images and film can cross language barriers in a way that text simply can’t.
It’s better to show than tell
On websites, people barely read the text. Rather, we scan the page looking for something that catches our interest – usually headlines and images. The typical website user reads about 20% of the text content, according to the Nielsen Norman Group. Visuals help with scanning because we process images much faster than text. The human brain is incredibly fast at processing and attaching meaning to a symbol. Researchers from MIT have seen evidence that the human brain can identify images as quickly as 13 milliseconds.