Some interesting new research by Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler from Dartmouth examines attempts to change people’s strongly-held pre-existing beliefs. This kind of research is very important, especially for progressive organisations and causes, and it ties into what my previous blog post about evidence-based campaigning.

The research looks at (mis)perceptions of three issues: the war in Iraq, job growth under Obama and global warming. In particular, they use graphs to display complex information, such as a graph showing the number of jobs created under Obama, and compare it to a paragraph of text explaining the same information.

From the abstract:

People often resist information that contradicts their preexisting beliefs. This disconfirmation bias is a particular problem in the context of political misperceptions, which are widespread and frequently difficult to correct. In this paper, we examine two possible explanations of the prevalence of misinformation. First, people tend to resist unwelcome information because it is threatening to their worldview or self-concept. Drawing from social psychology research, we therefore test whether affirming individuals’ self-worth and thereby buttressing them against this threat can make them more willing to acknowledge uncomfortable facts. Second, corrective information is often presented in an ineffective manner. We thus also examine whether graphical corrections may be more effective than text at reducing counter-arguing by individuals inclined to resist counter-attitudinal information.

There’s a lot to read through in this article, and it is definitely worth reading in detail (and the PDF is free to access).

The main take aways from this research is that there is a right way and wrong way to present complex information that contradicts peoples’ deep-held beliefs, and that graphs can help reduce misconceptions. (Of course, graphs are not a silver bullet.) The research is also clear that just using text to present information that contradict’s someone’s deeply held beliefs just doesn’t work:

When people encounter dissonant information, it is threatening to their self-concept, which they seek to maintain by either dissonance reduction or other strategies for affirming their self-worth… In particular, they tend to interpret ambiguous or mixed information in line with their preexisting views and to resist or reject counter-attitudinal information. For instance, Lord, Ross, and Lepper (1979) found that individuals who were presented with balanced information about the effectiveness of capital punishment rated the counter-attitudinal information to be less convincing and of lower quality than pro-attitudinal information.

In addition to using graphical information, Nyhan and Reifler also test using “affirmation” tests, where they ask respondents to recall pleasant experiences or thoughts about themselves before presenting them with “dissonant” information. This can reduce misconceptions. Affirmation combined with graphical representation has the greatest effect.

For progressive organisations, this kind of research should provoke some thoughts about how we present information. For example:

• Can we simplify our message so we reduce the possibility we will be misunderstood?
• Can we present any of the information we’re trying to get across in a different way? For example, with graphics, or graphs?
• Have we written or presented the information in a way that’s mindful of our audience?
• When presenting confronting information, can we reduce the confrontation by “affirming” the reader?

Again, it’s worth pointing out that this research doesn’t look at how to change minds but rather how to correct misperceptions. This research shows that by presenting information graphically and using affirmation, even people who are predisposed to disagree with uncomfortable facts are more likely to acknowledge those unwelcome facts.

No related posts.

I write a lot about good campaign websites and landing pages, and I get often get asked for examples of what I mean.

This post is a showcase of four of the best union campaign websites out there at the moment. One is a campaign that I had direct involvement in, while the others encapsulate most or all of the principles that I write about.

There For You

Organised by the Victorian Trades Hall Council, There For You is a campaign aimed at engaging the community about the public wages policy of the Liberal (conservative) state government which limits wage increases to below inflation. This website is the online hub of the campaign.

I had direct involvement in this campaign with VTHC campaign organiser Luke Hilikari (as I work for an affiliate of the Hall), especially in the online elements.

Why is this campaign website good?

This website ticks almost all of the boxes for good campaign website.

1. Simple: I write a lot about the importance of good design. This website is effective because of the “underdesigned” feel. There are clear design decisions that make the message have more impact. There are no distractions (such as unnecessary side-bars, menues or other elements).
2. Clear goals: The website’s goals are also clear and were determined from the start. The primary aim of the website is to encourage campaign supporters to sign up to support the campaign (email) and engage on social media (like on Faebook). The video is the main platform to drive engagement — you watch the video then sign up. The website will also be a returning point for future engagement points.
3. Layered engagement: Speaking of engagement, the website promotes several engagement points: email, social media and viewing the video. The presence on the three networks (Facebook, Twitter and YouTube) can be enhanced through using email to promote those networks. (Email is the “killer app” for campaigning after all.)
4. Personal: The strong use of photos and videos is a key element to this campaign, to make the message powerful through stories. People engage better with images of people — and the video and images feature real union members.

The design for the site was done by the Reactor Group.

Not Your ATM

This website, created by Working America (a campaigning arm of the AFL-CIO), was set up in response to the TARP bailout of US financial instutitons in 2008. The site was a kind of “field experiment” for Working America, who held a bunch of events for members, activists and the general public to make signs and get their photos taken. The site is run using the open-source Drupal system.

Why is this campaign website good?

I’m sure you’ll agree that this campaign site meets the optical test for a good site, and like There For You, it is built around an idea.

1. Professional design: The site was professionally designed as a single-page site aimed to promote two things. While the site is very colourful and definitely not underdesigned like There For You, the design helps accentuate the message by placing the photos front-and-centre, and also emphasising the main call to action.
2. Strong call to action: The call to action for this site is very clear: “join the movement – upload your pic”. While I’m told this element of the site was not a runaway success, the call to action is supported by the “social proof” of the existing photos. This lowers the barrier to participation through showing that others have already uploaded their picture.
3. Awesome functionality: The upload picture feature is a really neat (and is the main gimmick of the site), and is also enhanced because of the social-share feature allowing people to share photos on Twitter and Facebook.

The site design was done by New Signature.

Experience Matters

The United Steel Workers created this campaign and petition to support their locked-out members at Honeywell’s uranium processing plant in Metropolis, IL. Unlike the other two sites, it was done “in house”. The campaign site is a good example because it focuses on a primary activity for visitors to perform (sign the petition). The video explains the necessity of the petition, and there is further proof provided for the campaign itself with featured report at the bottom. I hope that the USW did some good email follow up of people who signed the petition (and that they promoted it with PPC and social ads online).

Why is this campaign website good?

1. Clear call to action: The purpose of this page (the petition) is clear and prominent. I wonder how many people would watch the video and not sign the petition, but regardless of that, the call to action is clear.
2. Thematic design: The design of the form and the page itself is very thematic, and compliments the key message of the video and petition.
3. Multimedia: Just like There For You, this site has a video — and the USW also want to promote the campaign through social sharing. Secondary calls to action prompt supporters to share the campaign on social networks as well as by email. The only downside to this is that sharing the video itself does not promote the website, which could reduce the number of people who sign the petition.

This site was designed by noted digital agency Trilogy Interactive.

These three sites are not by any means the “best” or only good campaign sites for unions. There are others — and I encourage you to visit Creative Unions to see excelent examples of union websites, design and campaigns.

Related posts:

1. Eight union websites worth checking out
2. Four effective “calls to action” to use on your union campaign website
3. Why using free web services for your union campaign website is a bad move

All unions, progressive organisations and political parties produce advertisements (or collateral) — whether posters, brochures, leaflets, billboards and so on. We can easily measure whether the collateral has been successful by whether the intended audience actually stops and consumes the ad. “Where the eye stops, the sale begins” is an old advertising maxim.

With unions under pressure to compete for workers’ attention in an increasingly “noisy” space (workplaces, public areas, television, etc), and relying on limited resources, it is important that their collateral (posters, brochures, etc) are as effective as possible. New research by Rik Pieters, Michel Wedel, & Rajeev Batra into the effectiveness of ads should be of interest to union communicators and progressive designers. Decision makers — union secretaries, lead organisers, campaign managers and marketing managers — can also refer to this research to understand why it is important to invest in good design.

In their article, The Stopping Power of Advertising, in the Journal of Marketing, Pieters, Wedel and Batra distinguish between two elements of design: “feature complexity” and “design complexity”, and the two approaches to design in advertising: simplicity and complexity. They argue that feature and design complexity have different effects on attention and attitude towards the ad.

Feature complexity is defined as:

Advertisements that contain more detail and variation in their basic visual features, color, luminance, and edges are more complex… Researchers have examined this in computer and vision science under the general labels of “visual complexity” (Donderi 2006; Huhmann 2003) or “visual clutter” (Rosenholz, Li, and Nakano 2007).

Images that are high in feature complexity are “visually cluttered” which hinders people in understanding the purpose of the ad:

Advertisements high in feature complexity divert people from carefully looking at the brand, which reduces
attention to the advertisement as a whole… Because the brand receives less attention, people cannot easily determine what the advertisement is for and thus like it less. In general, the processing load caused by high levels of visual clutter should be liked less because consumers’ motivation and ability to process information are low under normal ad-viewing conditions.

Design complexity is very differently defined:

Alternatively, advertisements with more elaborate designs in terms of the shapes, objects, and patterns they contain are also more complex. Whereas feature complexity taps the unstructured variation in the visual features of image pixels, design complexity taps the structured variation in terms of specific shapes, objects, and their arrangements in the advertisement. Researchers have previously examined this under the general label of “complexity” or “structural complexity” (Arnheim 1954; Berlyne 1958; Cox and Cox 1988). Because it resides in the advertisement’s creative design, we call it “design complexity.” Decisions about design complexity are fundamental in ad development and under direct control of advertisers and ad agencies.

The design complexity is purposeful and engaging — and actually aids in the comprehension of the ad’s purpose by the viewer, and can help with the “glueing” process (that is, the stickiness of the ad).

Because the design complexity of advertisements mostly resides in the pictorial rather than in the brand or text, people should pay more attention to the pictorial, which will raise attention to the advertisement as a whole. Because the complex pictorial is more engaging, people are also expected to like the advertisement more.

Similarly, because design complexity “evokes midlevel perceptual processes” and “does not raise visual clutter”, a complex design does not necessarily make it harder for viewers to understand the ad.

The entire article is interesting — and filled with examples of ads with feature complexity and design complexity — but the takeaway is this:

Feature complexity is the density of visual detail in the advertisement in terms of color, luminance, and edges. It hurts brand attention and attitude toward the ad. Design complexity is the intricacy of the creative design of the advertisement in terms of its shapes, objects, and organization. It helps attention to the pictorial and to the advertisement as a whole, ad comprehensibility, and attitude toward the ad. These findings are important because design complexity is under direct control of advertising creatives, agencies, and advertisers. In addition, we proposed and found that visual complexity is distinct from brand identifiability (i.e., the difficulty or ease of identifying the advertised brand). Increased difficulty of identifying the advertised brand harmed ad comprehensibility. Jointly, this reveals that complex advertisements need not be complicated and that the question whether visual complexity harms or helps advertising performance critically depends on where the complexity resides: the features or the design of the advertisement. Feature complexity harms and design complexity helps ad performance.

Design matters. Stuffing your posters, leaflets, brochures, websites, etc, with visual details is actively counterproductive. Visual clutter in your marketing collateral makes it harder for people to understand what the ad is all about and to take away the information contained in the ad.

Having creative designs — designs that tell a story, are creative or aesthetic — actively makes the ad more effective. People look at the ad longer, the message is more “sticky”, has greater comprehensibility and attitudes are more positive.

I completely agree with Pieters, Wedel and Batra, who conclude by recommending that marketers invest in good design. Unions have limited resources at their disposal, and it makes sense to invest in a good designer, rather than waste money distributing poorly designed material that does not achieve its purposes or actively does damage.

Related posts:

1. Fluency, fonts and union design
2. “You look where they look”: research on design
3. The importance of design for political campaigns

People are hard wired to look at other people’s faces, and to look where other people look. This principle is an important one to keep in mind when you are designing your websites, leaflets and posters.

UseableWorld.com.au has a very interesting post about how this phenomenon actually works.

Here’s a little experiment with 106 people that I’ve demonstrated the Tobii T60 eye tracker to over the last month or so.

The image below is a sample gaze path of one person looking at a baby in a product ad:

The blobs are where the person has fixated on the image. You’ll notice the person starts looking in the middle of the page (we planned it that way by using a fixation cross between each stimuli)  and then goes straight to the baby face.  He focusses on it a few times then moves his attention over to the text by his 7th fixation.

And here’s an image of that same baby looking up and toward the main content heading. Notice the person fixates less on the baby’s face and then he quickly looks straight over to the text at the 5th fixation.

One person you say?

Well, here’s a combined heat map of 106 people looking at the first image. The redder the spot, the more time people looked at it.

There is heaps of focus on the baby’s face and relatively little on the text.

Here’s the same 106 people looking at the second image for  the same amount of time (The images were shown in a to everyone in a random order on Tobii Studio software running with a Tobii T60 eye tracker).

Notice how many more people are actually reading the text that the baby is looking at in the above image? Not to mention the increased attention on the brand!

Two key elements to take away from this research are:

1. The ad with the baby looking at the ad copy resulted in more people actually reading the text.
2. The text elements were brief and to the point.

Compare and contrast these two landing pages by 37 Signals, an American software company that regularly A/B tests its signup pages.

The original landing page was very text heavy — some would say over designed — whereas the version on the right has much less text and is less crowded (not to mention a nice photo of a happy customer). As a result, the second version has a significantly higher conversion rate. Unfortunately, 37 Signals has not tested a version of their landing page with the person looking at the product text. It is also worth repeating what 37 Signals writes:

What works for us may not work for you. Please do your own testing.

So next time your union or progressive organisation is thinking about designing an important leaflet or poster, consider using a photo of a member looking at your main headline — and if you’re designing a website, I strongly recommend trying to A/B test your signup page.

Related posts:

1. Fluency, fonts and union design
2. Lessons for union recruitment: brand choice research
3. Stopping power: why good design matters

With more and more unions relying on Internet campaigning to support their campaigns, it’s essential that we do everything we can to make them effective and successful. Indeed, a campaign website is increasingly essential to the success of campaigns that traditionally would have only included posters, leaflets and stickers.

A union’s website can be the first (or only) interaction that a potential member or supporter has with the union. So it needs to be a good experience. While many unions are increasingly using social media, a Facebook or Twitter account for your campaign, without a specific campaign website, is like tying one hand behind your back. You’re operating at half-effectiveness.

A campaign website needs to not just exist, it needs to perform. It needs to attract visitors, educate them and convince them to take action. There’s no point in having a website “just because”. Today, the web is social and interactive. It’s not static like most union websites tend to be. As such, a union’s campaign website can no longer just be an online media release. It needs to integrate search, blogging, social media and engaging content (such as photos and videos).

Today, increasingly potential union members and supporters like to do online research. They are used to this through their typical web behaviour – where you read reviews and conduct research on  goods before you buy them. Many people turn immediately to Google (or, less likely, Bing) to find out about an issue, a service or a product. Making a decision to join a union (or support a campaign) is no different.

So, here are the four must-haves for your union’s campaign website.

1. Make it easy to find

It would be a disaster for a union to spend thousands of dollars (or more) on a campaign website only for it to go unvisited and unnoticed. There are several easy ways to make sure your site is easier for people to visit.

• Try to build inbound links: Building inbound links (where other websites link to you) is a simple way to get found. This can be done through traditional media and public relations — getting news stories mentioning your website. However, many unions forget to do some basic things, like ask peak bodies (Trades Halls, ACTU) to link to their campaigns. Search engines use as part of their algorithms, the number of quality, trustworthy sites that link to yours. Getting news sites and other union sites to link to your campaign website helps it be found. Additionally, don’t forget about blogs and bloggers — and if your organisers or members keep a blog, ask them to write a post about your campaign site (or send a link to Creative Unions). You could also ask to write guest posts (so long as you have a pre-existing relationship with the blog).
• Do some basic search-engine optimisation (SEO): SEO basically means making your website easy for programs like Google, Yahoo or Bing to find and archive your content. There are a lot of companies that promise the world with SEO — like “guaranteed first place”. While there is a science to SEO (and if you have the money, you should talk to your website designer about it), even a basic attempt at SEO will significantly improve the ability for your site to be found. SEO is based on “key words” – and there are different parts of your web page that search engines look at, such as headlines, sub-headings, image tags and links. Content management systems like WordPress do SEO “out of the box” fairly well, and most open-source CMSs have good quality free SEO plugins. The main thing is to keep your “key words” in mind when writing your page — and absolutely ensure you include your keywords with your images (e.g. “ALT text”).
• Don’t forget your title tags and meta tags: This is something that can easily be missed — even for major companies and online groups. The Title tags  and Meta tags are information that is contained in the background of your website, visible only to search engines. The Title tags also appear in your browser at the top of the page or tab (next to the favicon). They are also displayed by search engine results. Most open source CMSs (like WordPress) manage Title and Meta tags automatically, so you don’t need to be a coding genius, but some may require set up.
• Make sure you have a site-map: Search engines use site maps to sift through your web pages easily and find updated content. The best-practice site-maps are called XML site-maps, which are basically a special kind of file that lists all your website’s pages, and when they were updated. This is constantly overlooked — and for unions with large websites with lots of pages, it means that many of those pages will be extraordinarily hard to find. Open source CMSs have plugins that will automatically create XML site-maps for you, and if you are getting a consultant or developer to build a campaign site for you, make sure you ask them to create one.

2. Get good design based on usability

Atosha and I founded Creative Unions to promote good union design. Once you’ve managed to get a supporter or potential member to visit your campaign site, you want them to stay on your site and (mostly likely) take some kind of action.

This is where good design is essential. If your site is not user-friendly, intuitive and pleasant to navigate, your visitors will leave. Most websites have a “bounce rate” (the number of people who look at only one page on a website) that is between 30-60%. Many times, those visitors will never return — and why would they if their experience was frustrating and pointless. (Think trying to find a contact email address or phone number on a bank website!)

There are some simple things you can do to make a good impression the first time someone visits your campaign site — and studies have found that good design is the most important element.

I’ve written about making great campaign websites here. To reinforce those points, here are some extra tips:

• Have a simple colour scheme: The right use of colours can make the important information stand out, while not distracting the viewer. Having lots of colours, or clashing colours, can reduce usability and create frustration.
• Avoid unnecessary animation: If your union’s digital consultant suggests flash animations, say “no”. Don’t use animated gifs, background music, scrolling news tickers, or other “cool” gadgets and media. Things that move on a web page grab the eye and can distract from your most important content. If something does move on your site, make sure it is the important thing, and that it supports to goal of your site.
• Use intuitive navigation and layout: Follow the F-layout for content, and make sure your menu makes sense for the main pages people will try to find (e.g. contact, join, about). The (in)ability to easily find what they are looking for is one of the main pieces of feedback for websites. The key for good website navigation is to keep it simple and not to have too many layers or levels. Less is more with design, so don’t feel compelled to cram images, icons or photos on each page unless they really add to the purpose of the page.
• Typography must be readable: Fonts, and font colours should be easy to read. Don’t make them too large or too small. Make the difference between header-types clear. Use bullet lists, section headers and short paragraphs.
• Maintain consistency between pages: Key design elements, such as colours, logos, navigation, links, etc, should remain consistent between your homepage and sub-pages. This doesn’t mean every page should be the same, but it should recognisably be the same website when you go to different pages.
• Use the right images: Unless there is a very good reason, don’t use stock photos. Make sure the images you do use are specific to the content of the page, rather than generic. Tests on stock-photos versus photos of real, relevant people show that the real images win every time. Unions are in a great position to use images of members or organisers — this should be a great strength.
• Keep accessibility in mind: People with disabilities, especially visual impairment, use the Internet. Make sure your website is compliant with basic international usability standards (and demand this if you are outsourcing your campaign website creation to a consultancy). With this in mind, you should also try to make sure your site works on mobile phones and tablets, and a range of Internet browsers (Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Chrome, etc).

3. Have engaging content

Now people have found your site, got a good first impression, you need to make your content engaging and your calls to action compelling. When thinking about this, keep in mind the 10-second rule and ask: will a visitor know immediately what to do when they reach this page? Will they understand what page they’re on without help or explanation?

If your campaign website has a clear goal, with a clear call to action, it should be readily apparent to anyone visiting your page what they should do — read the article, sign the petition, sign up to the email list, or donate money.

• Use clear headlines: Make your most important ideas and calls to action prominent — using headlines and page titles. Make it clear why the visitor (potential member or supporter) should support your campaign or join your union.
• Include calls to action and next steps: Even if you just have a blog post or campaign update, make sure you include something for the viewer to do once they have read the update. If they’ve received their update, ask them to do something (share the page with friends, donate, join, etc).
• Test your copy with A/B testing: A/B testing means using two versions of a page with slight (or large) differences to test which version is more effective. It’s fairly easy to do, and can result in significant improvements to the number of people who complete your call to action. Especially for your home-page, don’t assume that they first version of the text you’ve written is the best or most effective. You can see a good example of A/B testing at work here.
• Don’t use jargon: Don’t use jargon or language that only insiders would understand. Unions are serial offenders in using industrial gobbledygook. Specialist terms and acronyms should be avoided. Spell things out if you must use technical terms, but avoid them whenever possible.
• Keep things simple, short: The shorter and more concise your website text, the more likely it is to be read and understood. Don’t try to be clever with word-play or cliches. With your campaign website, you want to be immediately understood, and you want your call to action to be crystal clear.
• Consider a campaign blog (but only if you have the time and resources): Blogging is great for most of the things I’ve written about here. It keeps content fresh and updated, blog CMSs have good out-of-the-box SEO and it is a great way to get inbound links. The downside is that blogs need to be kept updated — which means someone in your union needs to continually update it. A blog is probably most appropriate for your main union website rather than campaign site.
• Make your content sociable and shareable: Add “Tweet this” and “Facebook like” buttons to all of your pages. Social sharing is a great source of traffic — with the added benefit that the people visiting from these sources are more likely to hold similar views to the original person who shared the page. Most CMSs should include plugins or widgets that make social sharing easy.

4. Have goals for your campaign website

I have consistently advocated for union campaign websites that have specific goals and purposes. There’s no point in having a campaign site “just because”. It should have a specific purpose and goal. For campaign sites, you probably want supporters to do something. Campaign sites should therefore care about “conversion” — converting a visitor into a supporter, or a potential member into a member.

Calls to action are the key to measuring your campaign website’s goals. Most calls to action involve asking visitors to fill out a web-form with their email address and other details. You should be able to easily compare the number of people who view your call to action and the number of visitors who actually complete it (your conversion rate).

• Have a clear call to action: Make the call to action the most prominent part of your page. For simple campaign sites, you should probably make the call to action the centre-piece of your home page.
• Less is more: By the time someone has reached your campaign site, it is likely they have a fairly good idea of whether they will support your campaign or not. You don’t need to spend a huge amount of time convincing them, just to make it easy for them to take action.
• Here are four effective calls to action to use for inspiration.
• Consider the “engagement funnel”: What happens once someone fills out your form? Are they taken to a “thank you” page? Are they given an additional, secondary call to action? Will they receive an automatic email confirming their action? Have an answer to these questions. Think about how you can keep your new supporter or member engaged.
• Only include essential fields in your forms: There is a temptation to collect as much information as possible in your forms — address, workplace, postcode, etc. The more information you ask from people, the less likely they are to fill out the form. Think about the minimum information you need, and consider how you can subsequently get more information from supporters after they have signed up to support your union’s campaign.

Conclusion

Online campaigning has changed forever how unions engage with members, potential members and supporters. It is growing rapidly, and in Australia almost everyone has access to the Internet, social media and email. Unions cannot ignore it, and we certainly cannot use it poorly.

Online campaigning is more than just having a website for your union. It should integrate your social media engagement, email communication, media management and on-the-ground organising. Any campaign website you create for your union should be adaptable and easily changeable. Just like organisers continually refine scripts and talking points, so you should continually test and improve your campaign websites.

These four points are guidelines for your union’s campaign site — and if you are not building the site in house, then hopefully this article gives you some questions to ask your digital consultant.

Related posts:

1. Three world-class union campaign websites
2. Why using free web services for your union campaign website is a bad move
3. Four effective “calls to action” to use on your union campaign website

Have you heard of the concept of fluency?

Simply put (and for the purpose of this blog post), fluency is the “ease with which people process information”. Fluency affects a wide array of judgements people make about almost everything, and can influence our confidence in things, concepts, people or organisations.

It turns out that a lot of things can affect fluency – and the design choices we make, even for simple things like what fonts we choose can have significant impacts on a person’s ability to make a judgement about what they are viewing.

For unions – who have to compete each day for the attention of working people in a crowded space full of marketers, employers’ propaganda, magazines, TV, and more – understanding fluency is important.

Examples from experiments by Oppenheimer and Frank, in which lowered fluency was due to a font manipulation.

A research paper by Daniel Oppenheimer and Michael Frank (from Princeton and MIT respectively), A rose in any other font would not smell as sweet: Effects of perceptual fluency on categorization, suggests that font choice can have a significant impact on the fluency of a piece of communication. They did several experiments, where one piece of writing was clear and crisp (the baseline) and another where the same text was presented in a difficult to read font or was blurry, obscured or poorly photocopied.

They found that the fluency of the two pieces was different, and the readers’ judgements of the two pieces in the experiment was affected – by something as superficial as the font! What’s more, when illegible font or blurry photocopying was pointed out to experiement subjects as reasons for decreased fluency, the subjects attempted to disregard fluency as an influencing factor in their understanding of the information.

Oppenheimer and Frank’s conclusions:

1. Fluency can be increased by making the information easier to read (e.g. with a crisp font)
2. Fluency can be decreased by making the information harder to read (e.g. with a blurry or illegible font)
3. Audiences are not likely to consider influences on fluency (design, font choices, etc) as important – but they are!

This may seem common sense. Something that is hard to read is less easily processed.

But if you were to look at many of the posters, leaflets and websites of unions, you would see that this principle is regularly ignored.

I often see union flyers floating around that have little regard to the ease of reading. They jumble fonts in, or use inappropriate fonts (like grunge, smashed fonts, which are still popular in many unions), or crowd the message with lots of confusing images.

If unions are to make it easier for working people to understand our message – to make our communications more professionanal and effective – then we need to start to think more about fluency.

Simply put, good design matters – and an integral part of design is, believe it or not, font choices.

Other reading:

• An interesting discussion on when to use “ugly fonts” in design – over at Al Steven’s blog.
• How cognitive fluency affects decision making – over at UX Matters
• Princeton study finds easy to read fonts are harder to remember

Related posts:

1. Princeton study shows that easy fonts make things harder to remember
2. Union print design resources
3. Union website design tip: always include a favicon

A Princeton study entitled “Fortune favors the bold (and the Italicized)” (their emphasis) has shown that readers retain information more reliably when they are challenged with so-called “disfluent” fonts.

Example stimuli from Study 1 (from the report). The top panel shows an example disfluent font, and the bottom panel shows the fluent font.

The research suggests that introducing ‘disfluency’ – by making information superficially harder to understand – deepens the process of learning and encourages better retention.

The psychologists said information which has to be actively generated rather than ‘passively acquired’ from simple text is remembered longer and more accurately.

The study raises questions over how much fonts like Times New Roman and Arial, which are used in the majority of academic books, help readers revise for tests. [...]

He said the study showed the whole history of typography was had missed the point when it comes to learning.

Mr Lehrer said: ‘It has been a movement towards easy to read fonts. We assume that anything which makes it easier to see the content is a good thing.

‘This is especially the case in classrooms where teachers assume legibility makes it easier for kids to learn and remember information.

‘That turns out to be exactly backwards.

‘Disfluent fonts, the ones people tend to laugh off, fonts that are comically ugly, they tend to be the best for learning and for memory.’

‘When we see a font that is easy to read we’re able to process that in a mindless way, but when we see an unfamiliar font, one full of weird squiggles, we have to work a little bit harder.

‘That extra effort is a signal to the brain that this might be something worth remembering.’

The article is principally about e-ink readers, like Kindle, but it does rate mention for designers.

Related posts:

1. Fluency, fonts and union design
2. It is vitally important not to make connections
3. Why the Save VCA campaign is a great case study

Two instances of spoof activist websites have come to my attention recently (although there are no doubt thousands of them around).

The first was created by The Yes Men – the activists behind numerous notable media stunts including impersonating the WTO – and the Rainforest Action Network in the USA.

It is a spoof of the recent Chevron green-washing campaign called “We Agree”. The spoof included this website and a fake media release. Grist reported:

Chevron was planning a spendy (and ballsy) new ad campaign centered on “responsibility” and the phrase “We Agree” but prank-with-a-purpose group The Yes Men, along with activist organizations Rainforest Action Network and Amazon Watch, beat them to the punch by spoofing and releasing their own version of the ads right before Chevron’s actual ad launch. As usual, plenty of media outlets fell for it.

Chevron was understandably annoyed that their thunder was stolen by an activist group. Their media unit issued a statement crying foul:

Today, activist groups have attempted to interrupt the conversation by issuing a fake press release and establishing a counterfeit website, which are not affiliated with Chevron.

Yes Men responded:

“Chevron’s super-expensive fake street art is a cynical attempt to gloss over the human rights abuses and environmental degradation that is the legacy of Chevron’s operations in Ecuador, Nigeria, Burma and throughout the world,” said Ginger Cassady, a campaigner at Rainforest Action Network. “They must think we’re stupid.”

“They say we’re ‘interrupting the dialogue,’” said Andy Bichlbaum of the Yes Men, referring to Chevron’s terse condemnation. “What dialogue? Chevron’s ad campaign is an insulting, confusing monologue – with many tens of millions of dollars behind it.”

The legitimate Chevron site is very slick, but as the Tories in the UK found out, slick ads are vulnerable to spoofing.

The spoof site is not a direct rip off of Chevron’s site – only the message is attacked.

Subsequently, there have been several other spoofs that have appeared organically on the Internet. Here are two:

By all accounts, given the media the spoofs attracted, and with the intent being to highlight Chevron’s greenwashing, Iwould say it succeeded.

The second case of a spoof website being created to “disrupt” the normal operations of the target revolves around the recent Australian furore about the Murray Darling Basin Plan.

Irrigators opposed to the MDB Plan have created a website that is almost identical to the official MDB website.

The official site looks like this:

This move was criticised as having the potential to mislead. PR expert and PRIA councillor Tim Hughes said in an interview on the ABC:

I think it’s clever but I think it’s clever on the surface. I think that to be effective you really have to be up-front and honest in your communications and I don’t think it does that. So from that point of view I’m not sure that it’s got long term impact.

The implication is that a direct copy – albeit with changed text – could cause damage to the organising doing the spoof, through perceptions of dishonesty.

Of course, these two examples are fairly different. The first is aiming to expose the multi-million dollar green-washing that is performed by oil companies. It was expressly using parody to do so.

The second is done to highlight irrigator anger at the Murray Darling Basin plan. As New South Wales Irrigators Council CEO Andrew Gregson said, it’s no parody, “This is trying to tell people the other side of the story.” Gregson says the design of the site was chosen because “The layout of basinplan.com.au works.”

I’m inclined to partly agree with Hughes. The second example by the irrigators is less successful because the design potentially misleads without a purposeful message. The first example by The Yes Men misleads (journalists) with a purposeful intent to satirise.

Saul Alinsky is famous for saying that “ridicule” is an activist’s most potent weapon. That’s why The Yes Men’s stunt works well and strongly makes its point. It’s hard to counteract ridicule, and infuriates the target – as Chevron has found out.

Related posts:

1. Getting your media kit right for union campaign sites
2. Engaging the progressive grass-roots in the UK
3. Four harsh truths about union websites

I’ve had a recent surge in traffic from an interesting website, HR Communicator, pointing to my article showcasing union websites.

This should be a salutarywarning that as unions become more active, management of the companies where your members work will be checking your website.

Of course, this shouldn’t scare you – just be aware of it.

Be careful about what you put on the site, but don’t live in fear that your every word will cause a libel courtcase. The last thing you want happening is that your website never gets updated or has no content because you’re affraid that the bosses will read it and “uncover” your strategy, download special “delegate only” material or read training manuals for activists. Most employers don’t give a damn, and those that do are unlikely to use what they find on your site effectively.

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1. Four harsh truths about union websites
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I often get asked about union websites – and what makes a good website. There’s loads of general advice out there about how to get a fantastically designed website, and what goes into making them usable and interactive. Check out Smashing Magazine as a good place to start for general advice. You could also check Creative Unions for a showcase on the best trade union design and campaigns.

What I thought would be interesting and useful would be to track down some good union websites and highlight some of their best features.

The websites below aren’t the absolute word on “best” union websites, and by no means are any of them perfect. I’ve tried to find sites in Australia and internationally (and US sites feature prominently).

1. NUW

http://www.nuw.org.au/

What’s good:

• Very clear calls to action – Join, Get Active, Get Help
• Members are front and centre
• Option to sign up to the e-news letter

2. SEIU

http://www.seiu.org/

What’s good:

• Major news and campaign items are clearly highlighted.
• Lots of options for taking action and engaging with the site.
• Multimedia/featured video (YouTube) on home page.

3. Warehouse Workers United

http://www.warehouseworkersunited.org/

What’s good:

• You can join the campaign from the front page
• There’s a Spanish version of the website.
• Very clear and simple layout with lots of “white space” (i.e. not cluttered)

4. Walmart Workers for Change

http://www.walmartworkersforchange.org/

What’s good:

• Clear call to action – “Watch Video” – with other options to get involved.
• Email update signup and Spanish version of the site
• Campaign news is prominent

5. UNITE HERE

http://www.unitehere.org/

What’s good:

• Major union campaigns are easily accessible from front page
• Clean design and consistent colour palette
• Links to Facebook, Spanish site and e-newsletter on home page

6. MUA

http://www.mua.org.au/

What’s good:

• News and campaigns are separate
• A clear “About” secion is on the front page
• Slider puts most important content at the centre of the page without drowning out the other parts of the site

7. Blue Green Alliance

http://www.bluegreenalliance.org/

What’s good:

• Great colour combo that ties thematically with the purpose of the site
• Mission statement is made clear
• Calls to action are most prominent part of home page.

8. United Steel Workers

http://www.usw.org/

What’s good:

• Slider shows a thumbnail of the content, as well as makes important content prominent
• Media and blog are separate, both include RSS
• E-news signup form on home page

What do you think?

Have I missed some really good sites from other countries? Is your union’s site well designed or cutting edge?

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3. Four harsh truths about union websites

Everyone refers to the Obama campaign as benchmarks for so much in political campaigning, so forgive me while I do the same. Below is a video from the99percent, a think-tank in the US that has a series of talks, lectures or seminars that they video and put on the web. There’s a lot of really interesting stuff on their Vimeo channel, so check it out.

The video below is of Scott Thomas, the design director for the Obama campaign. It’s worth watching if you’re involved in a political campaign, because it underscores the importance of solid, quality design as part of the political, election process. Scott talks about how getting a consistent design across all communications channels was a major part of his role with his counter-part, the art director.

The design of the Obama campaign is widely considered to be excellent, and a real benchmark for political campaigns to aspire to. Scott talks about how much of it was done on the fly, but underpinning it all was the goal of consistency, so that emails, direct mail, leaflets, yard signs, stickers and so on were all the same.

Check out the video:

Scott Thomas: Designing the Obama Campaign from 99% on Vimeo.

(Aside: Yes We Can, the book I reviewed last week, was designed by Scott Thomas.)

The recent UK election is a good example of why design is important – good because it was of a high standard and because it is not the Obama campaign.

Both the Tory and the UK Labour designs were very visually distinctive. And with a geographically smaller electoral field, and with greater centralisation for the design key materials (e.g. billboards, posters, how to votes, etc), both Tories and Labour were able to have very consistent designs – consistency online and print.

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Just a quick tip for when you’re designing your union website: always include a favicon.

A favicon is the little 16 pixel by 16 pixel icon that represents your website next to the address bar or in a tab.

The Creative Union's favicon rendered by Google Chrome.

The favicon is an important part of your union’s website design. All major browsers will render the favicon, and it is used by most people to easily identify a website. This is especially the case for users who make use of tabbed browsing. Favicons are an important part of your union’s brand and the branding of your union’s campaign.

Quite a few union websites forget about their favicon. This is especially the case for websites built using Drupal and Joomla, both of which come preloaded with generic favicons. Not changing or customising your favicon is often the sign of a sloppy designer – and can be perceived by site visitors as being unprofessional.

Related posts:

1. Why using free web services for your union campaign website is a bad move
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