100 Things: Every Designer Needs to Know About People

74. Anecdotes Persuade More than Data

In my book Neuro Web Design: What Makes Them Click? I explain that most mental processing occurs unconsciously. People are unaware of this unconscious processing, so it’s easy to give more weight to information that we’re consciously aware of. It’s easy to forget that information is coming in and being processed from many sources. It’s easy to forget that you are processing emotions, too.

Let’s say you have to make a presentation to the department heads at work about your latest conversations with your customers. You interviewed 25 customers and surveyed another 100, and have lots of important data to share. Your first thought might be to present a summary of the data in a numerical/statistical/data driven ...