Science magazine giant New Scientist posted an article today announcing that their current cover had been chosen with the help of Neuromarketing. The article is 3 pages long and covers information about the field of neuromarketing — in particular the “whys”. It’s a great article about neuromarketing, particularly for people new to the concept.
New Scientist teamed up with NeuroFocus Europe to test 3 different possible cover designs. 19 male subjects (we won’t discuss the glaring absence of any female test subjects because that’s just irksome) were hooked up to EEGs and shown the three designs. The below design came out as the winner when tested across various criteria. Did it light up areas in the brain associated with memory recall, emotional engagement, and attention?
**UPDATE: I found the line up of the three cover designs that were tested. New Scientist is running a survey to see how readers would respond to the various designs, and you can see them there or below:
WHAT MADE THE WINNER THE WINNER?
Here’s an image of the testing process and results (click for larger image):
But that doesn’t really tell us WHY, does it? Here are a few of my theories.
Promotes Easy Eye Movement and Focus – Look at each design. You can literally feel how much easier it is for the eye to move from element to element in the winning design (middle).
Image Dominance – In the winning design the image dominates without obstructing or confusing other elements on the page. Notice how the image on design 1 makes it more difficult to read the text? Or how the image on design 3 is smaller and less dominant?
Cognitive Fluency – Both of the above factors along with choice of title text maximizes cognitive fluency. The design makes it easy to locate and understand what is being presented.
Additional thoughts?
Not just irksome that they didn’t use any females, infuriating. And you can’t comment unless you subscribe. I think the men liked the image because it looks femine and vaguely sexual.
oops. feminine.
Hmmm Claudia, that’s an interesting perspective. My guess is that had they run this test with female subjects that the middle cover would have still come out as the winner for the reasons I highlighted. I do think it’s a better design, but then again, I could be experiencing a justification bias right now and I wouldn’t even know. 😉
The decision to use male subjects was entirely practical. We had the time and resources to run about 20 subjects (that’s 4 days of laboratory time plus all the data processing and analysis). NeuroFocus advised us that to get meaningful results the subjecs should al be the same gender. Given our readership it was a no-brainer to use men.
At risk of infuriating left-handed people, I’ll reveal that they were all right-handed too.
Graham, I was really appreciative to hear why you had to choose your all male subjects. Right up until you had to throw in that last sentence.
Seriously, your explanation was enough.
sorry, I should have used a smiley or something to signal that it was meant to be a joke.
Ah yes, those emoticons we love to hate, and hate to love. Yet invaluable to replace our usual cues from voice, facial expressions, and body signals. Thanks for clarifying.
I look forward to hearing about the final results on this.
@Claudia – I thought the selected image looked like sperm – but you’re right too, it does have feminine attributes. It could be the sexual angle of it that lit up the male brain.
You gals are killing me!
What a great resource!
Great post. Thanks 😉
I agree with Claudia. Being a living, breathing male myself, I initially found the curves of the galaxy to be feminine in shape and yes, appealing. I would wonder how things would stack up if the better half of this species were to be included.
Will, thanks for stopping in. It is wildly interesting to me that more than one person found the galaxy image feminine and enticing. I didn’t see that at all, which of course does beg the question what the results would have been like had there been female subjects included for the study.
Nevertheless, I’m still drawn to the winning cover but for the reasons I stated. There is a natural, organic, and easy flow to the design that facilitates digestion of the content.