ABSTRACT
People who work in sustainability often communicate by developing exhibits or creating explanatory signage. This is a field of practice known as interpretation. Cognitive psychology research tells something about what will capture an audience's attention. It shows that content in our long-term memory consists of at least two main types: semantic and episodic memory. We instinctively pay attention to differences and changes in our environment. After we see a signal or pattern repeated several times, our old brain begins to ignore it. Research shows that people understand and remember text more easily when it is accompanied by graphics. Shifts in scale, where we see things at either a larger or a smaller scale than we are accustomed, captures our attention and provokes us to see reality in new ways. Effectively engaging audiences with exhibit content depends on attractiveness, brevity, clarity, and dynamism: exhibits must be attractive, brief, clear, and dynamic. The chapter dicusses conduct front-end evaluation.
