How successful was Mr. Roam's essential message? His visual explanation of American healthcare was chosen by Businessweek as "The World's Best Presentation of 2009." Interestingly—though perhaps not so surprisingly—this, according to Mr. Roam, prompted the White House Office of Communications to invite him in for discussions on visual problem solving. Again, that was 2009. Fast forward to today. What's happening with visual communication now, especially in ophthalmology?
A new take on an old elementIf the napkin—in other words paper—became hot again in 2008 as the sine qua non of presentation, you might be surprised to learn that an even older tool is a hit today—sand. More like sand animation, to be precise. The Wikipedia entry on sand animation, in which "animators move around sand on a backlighted or frontlighted piece of glass to create each frame for their animated films," notes the popular appeal of such media.
Kseniya Simonova won "Ukrain's Got Talent 2009," Joe Castillo was a top 5 finalist in 2012 in "America's Got Talent Season 7," and Vina Candrawati was runner up in 2013 in "Indonesia Mencari Bakat 3" or "Indonesia's Looking for Talent 3." They are all sand animation artists, and at least 18 such artists in all have made strong appearances in televised talent competitions globally. Clearly, this medium is connecting with people internationally, and Johan A. Hutauruk, MD, director, Jakarta Eye Center, Jakarta, Indonesia, has taken note.
Dr. Hutauruk recently spearheaded the effort to develop a sand animation that explains the concept of wavefront to patients. "PowerPoint is not entertaining," Dr. Hutauruk said. "This is why I came up with the idea of 'Wavefront in the Sand' [the title of Dr. Hutauruk's explanatory video]."
The video, which was presented this year at the APACRS Film Festival in Singapore, has none of the bells and whistles of PowerPoint or even a TV video, but it does have an engaging artist's touch. "Sometimes patients don't pay attention to what I am showing them on TV," Dr. Hutauruk said. "But using the sand animation that I put in the waiting room, patients pay attention. They find it attractive, wondering, 'How can someone make pictures with the sand?' They say it is an amazing video."An artist simply shifts sand around with his or her fingers in order to create different pictures that taken together form the animation. It's probably a lot more complicated than that to create, but all that patients see is simplicity, and they feel connected in a cosmic way to wavefront-guided LASIK, of all things.
Dr. Hutauruk noted the challenges of the animation creation. "The artist [we employed to perform the sand animation] asked me, 'What is wavefront—I don't know about that," Dr. Hutauruk recalled. "I had to explain step by step what wavefront is [as he performed his artistry]. 'Is this what you mean?' he would say. 'Yes, but not exactly—change it a little bit, like that,' I would say, and fortunately he was willing to help."
