The Importance of Using Visuals in your Workplace Training Materials

In a recent AFRBoss article, it was cited that an important trend over the next decade will be the shift from words to images in communication.

Rather than bombard people with an avalanche of reading material, people will prefer visual representation of data.

This isn't a surprise given our time-poor, attention-scarce, give-it-to-me-now lifestyle.

So to future-proof and update training materials, now more than ever, there is growing importance for companies to use visuals to aid in learning.

After all, we remember:

• 10% of what we read
• 20% of what we hear
• 30% of what we see
• 50% of what we both hear and see

In fact, studies by educational researchers found that 83% of human learning occurs visually.   Visually rich training materials keep the eyes busy and therefore, the brain more alert and active to learn information.

Yet, I often get amazed when I go through company training manuals how so few of them include pictures or even colour for that matter.  And of course, very few of them use video as part of training.

“Something is happening. We are becoming a visually mediated society. For many, understanding of the world is being accomplished, not through words, but by reading images.”

Paul Martin Lester, “Syntactic Theory of Visual Communication”

What can you do to start making your training materials more visually appealing?