The Tipping Point

Describe the Sesame Street research?

The Tipping Point by Maxwell Gladwell

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Sesame Street employed research to make the show stickier by using Barbara Flagg's eye movement sensor. By tracking a viewer's eye movement, the researchers noted whether a viewer tracked the appropriate action in the screen.

In Gladwell's example, the researchers at Sesame Street compared an episode where a character danced around and letters entered from various points of the screen. Though the episode held the children's attention, the eye movement sensor found that the children watched the bouncing character, not the letters, as intended. In a less flashy episode, in which the letters entered from left to write, children paid equal attention, according to the distracter. However, the eye movement sensor found that the children focused more on the letters in the second episode. Researchers found that by focusing on the appropriate part of an episode the intended message becomes stickier.

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The Tipping Point