I’ve been poking around the Red Nose Day website this week (no pun intended) and I have to say I’m impressed. Many of the charities I’ve worked with seem reluctant to allocate a big enough proportion of their Marketing budget to their website and it shows! They’re even more reluctant to spend on User Experience planning which is why it is refreshing to see a charity do a decent job of it – something that will certainly pay for itself in no time at all.
Plus it’s not everyday you see the call to action ‘Get all entrepeneurial’.
I especially like these fundraising pages. They are interactive and easy to digest, offering loads of quick and easy ways to get involved. Perfect for fundraisers of any age.
I enjoyed 10 O’Clock Live on Thursday but it was primarily down to David Mitchell’s genius. In his interview with Conservative MP David Willetts on student fees he put forward a compelling argument, backed up with a sound knowledge and a considered opinion.
But this isn’t a homage to Mitchell, what I really wanted to blog about was the argument put forward by Willetts that we can’t expect taxpayers who earn less that £21K to contribute, via their taxes, to the education of those who will likely earn more £21K once they graduate.
It reminded me of a concept I’d read about in the book ‘Nudge‘ by Thaler and Sunstein called ‘mental accounting’. The idea that money is ‘fungible’ (meaning it comes without labels) and as humans we assign labels to it in order to better control our use of it. Thaler and Sunstein use a lovely example of Dustin Hoffman’s mental accounting back in the days when he was a struggling actor. They tell how he used labelled jars in which to keep the money for his rent and bills and food and even though he has money in the rent and bills jars he asks his chum Gene Hackman for a loan for food. Watch Hackman telling the story here.
So why not use a bit of mental accounting on the education system? By taking some of the tax money from those who earn over £21K and putting it in the ‘jar’ marked ‘Free/subsidised higher education’ and then all the other taxes can go in the jar marked ‘Roads, health service etc etc’. That way the less well off people won’t be annoyed that they are paying for someone elses education and the people who are paying for it will be glad to give those young’uns the opportunity to learn stuff.
As an aside, I also share David’s concern that we are creating a market where students are more likely to choose the courses that lead to well paid jobs instead of the courses they actually want to do that might not have the same prospects, such as the Classics.
And if higher education does become free again I expect a full refund for mine.
So exciting. I’ve just received a big box from Amazon containing my holiday reading…and I intend to read them all I can tell you…
What with there being no new Harry Potter and the fact that I’ve finished both the Twilight trilogy and the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy ‘trilogy’ I was at a bit of a loss.
The trick to a good holiday book is something that you can dip in and out of in between dipping in and out of the pool, so the storyline can’t be too complex or the language too Dickensian (maybe that’s just me but paragraphs of flowery, twiddly, descriptive language commonly found in Vic Lit almost guarantee that I will have to read each paragraph twice – too much work for holiday reading). You also need to able to get suncream all over them and not care (so no first edition Jane Austen allowed).
With a little help from my friends I pulled together this collection from their trusted recommendations. Granted Oscar Wilde, Stephen Fry and Ayn Rand might be a little ‘off-brief’ but I think I’ve done quite well with the others. I’ll let you know next Monday ; )
Over the last week I’ve happened upon a couple of sites that are paving the way for inspiring and innovative navigation mechanisms.
The first is Dare‘s redesign of the Barclays site. I found it very easy to use and it made researching ISAs a little less dry and dusty than it always is. What’s interesting is that there is none of the usual horizontal or left hand navigation menus. Most of the navigation is done with page elements and a powerful right hand side column that seems to know exactly what you’re thinking and offers you appropriate links. Clever!
The second is Clearleft‘s redesign of Channel 4 News. They have used a ‘gravigation’ (floating bottom navigation) which I think really helps keep the top of the page uncluttered and makes the stories the heros. It degrades nicely when Javascript is turned off too. Result!
I would have loved to be a fly on the wall during user testing for these. I get a lot of nervousness from clients about trying new forms of navigation and these examples will hopefully go a long way to show that it is possible to deviate from the ‘fireplace’ layout without confusing the hell out of your users.
I was tidying my desk the other day when I came across a stack of old train tickets. I was about to throw them into the recycling when a sudden wave of nostalgia came over me.
There was the time we went to Cowes week, mixed with boating types and enjoyed a legendary Shutler Full English not once but twice.
There was the time I travelled to Susie’s to celebrate here 30th birthday and drink pink champagne in the garden.
There’s that pitch I went to with the guys from work, holding the torch for UE fully aloft and doing my best to help people understand why it really is the most sensible way to do things…no really, it is.
The design is pretty bold too. I can’t think of another train ticket I’ve seen that says ‘I’m going somewhere!’ quite as powerfully as the British Rail ones.
And yet, I take these little orange souvenirs totally for granted. if I was on holiday in a foreign country I would always keep the Metro or train tickets (hell I even keep printed serviettes and wine corks if I’ve had a particularly nice evening) as a souvenir of my travels.
Ikea have always had a small selection of food items to tempt you after a grueling 10-minutes-turned-2-hour visit but they’ve recently added lots more items of everyday Swedish foodstuffs.
I was particularly taken with these cans of cider – what awesome packaging! The graphics are stylish and impactful, not to mention cheap – all of Ikea’s brand values translated perfectly onto food.
