What 3Sixty Knows…

Europe has a new #1 browser

4th January 2011 by Pete Fairhurst

According to a new report from StatCounter, it looks like Firefox has finally beaten IE – 38.11% versus 37.52% respectively – to take the top spot in Europe year-on-year by just half a percentage point.

What’s interesting to note is that the report also suggests Chrome continues its meteoric rise in gaining market share, seemingly continuing to take bites out of both Internet Explorer’s and Firefox’s user base—even whilst those two browsers grapple for the top spot.

It’ll be interesting to see if and when Chrome’s market share levels out over the next few months. With both Internet Explorer 9 and the long-overdue Firefox 4 both set to be released any week now, it could end up being a healthy three-way scrap for users.

Posted in Browsers | Comments Off

Reframing saves lives

14th December 2010 by Iwein Dekoninck

Reading “Eating the Big Fish“, a book on planning and how small brands can compete with market leaders, I came across a great story about changing the world through reframing the problem.

Road safety campaigning in Britain in the ’80s wasn’t high on anyone’s radar. Most people were complacent about it and politicians felt they were doing enough. Road deaths were at around 6,000 a year, a figure in line with other countries.

When a group of BBC journalists were brainstorming possible television programmes, they challenged Nick Ross to make a boring subject interesting. You guessed it: road safety.

How did he do this?

Firstly, he reframed the concept of road safety from a statistic to an epidemic (the programme was called “The biggest epidemic of our times”). You can’t do much about a statistic, but an epidemic is a threat to the community that we can all face up to and fight.

Second, he realised he needed to bring the numbers to life. What does 6,000 people a year really mean? So, for the opening of the documentary, he asked the population of a typical British town with a population of 6,000 people to lie down, as if dead. “Every year”, he began, “a town the size of Wallingford dies on British roads”. He went from talking about an abstract number to talking about something that was completely unacceptable.

Thirdly, he changed the language. He shocked the authorities by no longer talking about “saving lives” but instead about “killing”: instead of 6,000, they should aim to only kill 4,000 a year.

He became Chairman of the National Road Safety Committee and in that position eventually managed to get his revised targets accepted. Tighter legislation and greater investment led to the number of deaths to come down to 3,500 at the turn of the milennnium. The momentum has been maintained with deaths down to 2,500.

The UK is now among the leaders in the world for road safety and as a direct consequence British mortality rates to the age of 50 are among the lowest in the world.

I think this demonstrates that understanding human behaviour is a great asset for communicators.

Posted in Behavioural Economics, Planning, User Experience | 2 Comments »

More on design simplicity

6th December 2010 by Jonathan Waring

I’ve been a long time supporter of ‘design simplicity‘ for many reasons that I wont go into here. However, I came across this great observation by Seth Godin

He explains why we add too much:

“…As digital marketers seek to increase profits, they almost always make the same mistake. They continue to add more clutter, messaging and offers, because, hey, it’s free.”

Why it’s frequently a poor idea:

“In fact, human behavior tells us that this is a more permanent effect than we realize. Once you overload the user, you train them not to pay attention…”

And concludes:

“More is not always better. In fact, more is almost never better.”

While there are occasions when Choice Architecture can dictate that ‘more is more’, I think the principle of simplicity or focus in a age of increasing complexity is nearly always an improvement for users.

Seth Godin: The inevitable decline due to clutter

Tags: simplicity
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off

The office isn’t a good place to get stuff done

1st December 2010 by Iwein Dekoninck

Jason Fried talks about productivity and efficiency and how managers and meetings are the enemy of getting things done.

Well worth a watch.

There is an interesting comment by Dan Greenberg who uses a comparison with rowing to make the point that you get to a certain size where you need managers.

When it’s a single, there’s no room for a coxswain (equals there are no meetings or managers).

When it’s a quad, you have with and without coxswain. There’s a trade-off between the extra weight of a manager… and the better synchronicity of the team and steering of the boat.

When it’s an 8, there’s a coxswain. There’s no question that a manager is needed, even if the team is finely tuned and well-practiced at working together.

I don’t think Jason is advocating to do away with managers, I think he’s advocating being mindful of how imposed distractions kill productivity. Finding the right balance is all about the personalities of the people involved.

We often talk about whether we should have music on or not. Some think the office is like a morgue without, some can’t get anything done with.

You can’t please everyone all the time.

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3Sixty advent calendar

1st December 2010 by Jonathan Waring

Ria has made this amazing advent calendar. Each day a different gift from someone at 3Sixty. Todays gift was for Matt, a guitar lesson from our resident Pete Thownsend – Andrew Arnott.