Sublime

Use stories as much as you can, even for what you think is factual information.

Provide ample contrast between foreground and background. Black text on a white background is the most readable.

Some people are good at delaying gratification and others are not.

Social interaction and visual cues will go a long way to attracting and maintaining attention.

Keep online demos or tutorials under 7 minutes in length.

Decide what the salient cues are for your audience.

People get their mental models from past experience.

Put the most important information (or things you want people to focus on) in the top third of the screen or in the middle.

Rather than requiring people to perform a task over and over, consider a design where they can choose all the items they want to take action on and then perform the action on all the items at once.