This post is an expansion on a recent tweet in which I suggested that:
“A simple test of information’s effectiveness: How far into it do the majority of people have to go to find out what they need to know?”
See the full A simple test of information’s effectiveness page
The saying goes (and it’s especially relevant to what I do) that ‘less is more’, and in most cases this is true. After all, a lot of what I get paid to do is delete what’s not necessary to get it down to a manageable amount of information.
Too often though, the less is more mantra is taken too literally and ends up making things more difficult than they need to be…
See the full When less is just more work page
As businesses, we’re constantly taking time to understand our customers but how often do we take time to check our customers understand us. I’m not talking about our brand values or anything deep and meaningful like that. I’m talking about the everyday pieces of information we use to tell customers about everyday matters: instructions to [...]
See the full Guest blog for the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce page
When providing people with directions, whether written or on a map, the temptation is to give them a route that’s used by people who make the same journey regularly. When we make a journey regularly though, we often don’t take the simplest route, that being defined as the one that involves the least number of decisions about [...]
See the full The shortest route isn’t necessarily the simplest one page
So, here’s a recent idea from a politician: to change labelling on alcohol to replace Units with Centilitres. I’d be interested to know your thoughts. In the meantime, here’s why I think it’s a bad idea. Very simply, when was the last time you ordered ’125ml of the house red’ or ’275ml of Becks (other [...]
See the full I’ll have 125ml of the house red please… page