Summary: Giving cues such as clues, explanations and other forms of context enable a user to have a better understanding.
J.Gibson formulated a term called Information Pickup Theory.
Information Pickup Theory explains that human perception is based on information and cues provided by the environment. If I see a brown object crawling on the floor in my bedroom, even if I’ve never seen it before, or don’t its name, its shape, size, colour, and proportions to the environment communicate that it is may be an insect.
Whenever you can provide someone with the surrounding context, you’re able to give them a better ability to understand.
It’s similar to how you could be looking at a zoomed image of a tiny chair and exclaim, “that is huge, I could never pick it up.” Zooming out of the image of the chair to see it in relation to people, and the walls will soon make you realise that it’s actually a miniature chair you had been looking at.
It’s also why virtual reality (VR) has the potential to change educational institutions (and learning) as we know it today. Rather than just showing a student the names and pictures of the different countries in the world, through VR and AR, the student can visit the country from the classroom. This will enable them to see it, hear it and draw experiences to it, enabling them to perceive, and eventually retain the information better.
How do explanations fit into this?
What the Information Pickup Theory and Virtual Reality have in common is the use of explanations to give context. Not necessarily in the conventional way of providing verbal explanations, but rather, by providing environmental stimuli.
How the user will see, touch, feel, and sometimes even touch your tech product will contribute to their ability to understand your offering. The strategic use of colour, sounds. and images as a form of explanation then have the ability to improve the experience of the product.
