Designing for the Small Screen

Mobile phone and Internet Users

At the recent Broadcast Educators Association Festival in Las Vegas, colleagues Garry Hare, Bonnie Buckner, Sean Thoennes, and MPRC Executive Director Erik Gregory gave a brilliant panel presentation on different aspects and considerations of designing media for a small screen. (You can read Bonnie's paper on the cognitive psychology of small screen presentations in the Spring issues of The Media Psychology Review, which will be online by the end of May.) This chart, from an fascinating special edition of the Economist, underscores the rapidity of change in the media environment and the timeliness of their presentation. The shift toward cell phones, in this example, also emphasizes the importance of using psychology to successfully design and implement media technologies that effectively deliver information and education, not just entertainment. The mobility and cost-effectiveness of smaller scale technologies offer tremendous promise for improving educational opportunities to … [Read more...]

Boomer Brains and Smart Media

As a baby-boomer and media psychologist, articles about positive approaches to aging catch my attention. What I love about the baby-boomer generation is that they do tend to go about things with a kind of self-focused all or nothing enthusiasm. According to an article by Katie Hafner “Exercise Your Brain, or Else You’ll...Uh...” there is a surge of anxiety about memory loss among boomers. Being the elephant in the bathtub, demographically-speaking, the boomers' desire to defy the decline of aging has spawned a industry of brain health products from supplements like Omega 3 oil and Coenzyme Q10 to technology-based products. Nintendo, Posit Science, Mind Fit, luminosity.com, Happy-Neuron.com and SharpBrains are just a few of the software and web-based programs available for boomers who want to maintain peak mental condition. Hafner writes that these companies and services are targeting the boomer’s fears of aging. I don’t know if it’s fear or stubbornness, … [Read more...]

Cognitive Psychology, Positive Psychology and Sustainable Jobs

David Brooks has an op-ed called “The Cognitive Age” in the New York Times that I think is a must-read. He talks about current perceptions of globalization--how it has become a popular paradigm for explaining change--especially change we don’t like. Brooks argues that it is the wrong paradigm, because it doesn’t explain what is really happening in the world. Brooks argues that a useful paradigm focuses on cognitive skills. Brooks’ argument is right in line with what Peter Drucker told us years ago when he wrote about “Knowledge Workers.” The changes brought about by new technologies are not about nations and cheap labor; they are about the increasing demands for skilled human capital. Sustainable jobs come from doing useful things that people need. This is interesting to me because I spend a lot of time thinking about how the mass media, by accident or design, contribute to intergroup conflict on a national and international scale and how globalization has become a … [Read more...]