Neo, Shepley, and Niederdeppe evaluated how what’s seen can influence responses to what’s heard. They collected data in “two noise levels (High: 75dB LAeq, low: 30dB LAeq) and two message conditions (noise-related visual cue or no visual cue). Half of the respondents saw a flyer with a noise-related visual cue (an emoji with both hands to its ears) while the other half saw a flyer without such a cue (an emoji without hands or ears). . . . a message with a noise-related visual cue placed in a noisy physical environment produced a higher ME [message elaboration] score than a message without such a cue in a noisy physical environment. . . . . This suggests the potential for . . . communicators to enhance the effectiveness of strategic messages by designing them in ways that consider physical environmental attributes in which they are likely to be experienced.” Message elaboration (ME) was described as “an indicator of the depth of engagement with the message.”
Jun Neo, Mardelle Shepley, and Jeff Niederdeppe. “Does Message Content Interact with the Physical Environment? An Exploratory Study on the Influence of Noise and Noise-Related Visual Cues on Message Elaboration.” Journal of Environmental Psychology, in press, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2021.101657
Sally Augustin, PhD, a cognitive scientist, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com), a monthly subscription newsletter and free daily blog, where recent and classic research in the social, design, and physical sciences that can inform designers’ work are presented in straightforward language. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012). She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.