Blinkers
Selective oscillation achieves desired attention aspirations absent undesirable side effects.
Someone I knew long ago had a small electronics company with a client who wanted to make an attention-grabbing light display for a store window. This fellow’s office was set up with six light sources that were to be part of that display, where each source was a mirrored half-globe roughly one foot in diameter with a very bright light bulb that would turn on and off at its own independent rate.
As these bulbs would flash on and off asynchronously, the visual effect was quite stunning. There was one problem, though. Now and then, all six bulbs would go dark at the same time and when they did, the visual effect was actually jarring. That was a problem. I was asked if there was something we could do to avoid the jarring darkness, but quite frankly, I had no idea how this could be achieved with the items at hand.
This past December, a local diner set up a flashing light display out front in celebration of the holiday. It reminded me of my past-history display issue…and then I realized something.
Figure 1 A selective flashing light display still cultivates sizeable viewer attention.
The diner’s flashing light display was as visually striking as the globe set up was supposed to have been, but the diner’s display never went entirely dark. That was because only some of the light sources were blinking. Most of the light sources stayed lit all the time. Only a few of them needed to be blinking to achieve the desired visual effect.
Had I been smarter, I might have been able to solve that client’s problem. But since I don’t have a time machine, I couldn’t go back and do anything.
John Dunn is an electronics consultant and a graduate of The Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (BSEE) and of New York University (MSEE).
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