Peripheral Vision

October 7, 2009 by Jerry 

A delightful Corona beer video commercial, set in their now-trademark tropical seascape, makes a humorous, but telling point about peripheral vision. A man and a dark-haired woman are seated in beach chairs, their backs to the camera, their heads facing straight ahead toward the surf. The man is on the left, the woman on the right; between them is a low table with two bottles of Corona, each topped with a wedge of lime.

Corona Squirt

After a moment, a tall and tanned, willowy blond girl, wearing a tiny white bikini, enters into the scene from the right and slowly crosses to the left. The man’s head turns and follows the blond until she leaves the frame. After she has gone, the man’s head returns to face front. After another moment, the seated woman’s hand reaches up, takes the lime wedge from the man’s bottle, and squirts it at the man’s face. During the entire scene, the brunette’s head never turns.

In addition to the classic jealous love triangle of drama, the commercial plays on the theory that women have peripheral vision while men have tunnel vision because of our origins as cave dwellers. The widely-held theory (you can find thousands of web search items) is also expressed in a book called, Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t Read Maps: How We’re Different and What to Do About It, which posits that primitive men, as hunters, had to be narrow focused on their prey, while primitive women, as nurturers, had to have a wider scope of vision for the safety of her children.

Be that as it may, all men and all women do share one characteristic about their vision: the hair-trigger reflex of their eyes to visual stimuli; so whether as tunnel or as peripheral vision, all human eyes react involuntarily to new images. This immutable fact plays a critical role in presentations.

The instant a new graphic appears on a presentation screen, the eyes of every audience member immediately dart over to look at it—involuntarily. At this very same moment, most presenters continue speaking. Because the audience’s eyes are more sensitive than their ears, they focus on the graphic and lose the presenter’s words. The audience stops listening.

If instead, the presenter pauses and gives the audience time to absorb what they see, the presenter maintains the audience’s attention.

The pause is the central element in a skill called Graphics Synchronization which you read about in a prior blog. The pause is also central to the animation of presentation graphics, the subject of yet another blog. I invite you to read both of these, but they can both be summarized in one word: pause.

(Thanks to Olivier Fontana of Microsoft inspiring yet another blog.)

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Comments

One Response to “Peripheral Vision”

  1. Tammy Green on May 24th, 2010 5:26 pm

    Jerry, I’m always amazed at your choice of videos. This one was excellent!

    Since my class with you a couple of months ago, I’ve been religiously practicing my less-is-more slides while adding value with my very own commentary. It’s marvelous to feel useful in front of the crowd instead of being a glorified button-pusher advancing the slides.

    I have also found the trick to animating Smart Art in PowerPoint. It works beautifully. If you haven’t discovered it yet, let me know and I’ll pass it along.

    Sincerely,
    Tammy Green
    (a very satisfied student)

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