Firstly, I fully support proportional representation in New Zealand. FPP (first past the post) was a crock - having lived in “safe” electorates there was little point in getting out of bed on election day. The danger in criticising MMP is that such criticism can be used as a justification for returning to FPP. There are better PR (proportional representation) systems out there - STV (single transferable vote), for example.
What’s wrong with MMP? Fundamentally, the two votes. These two votes are complicated for people to understand and they are not equal and have different effects depending upon the electorate you are in. How you should place your electorate vote to achieve the end result you want in parliament can be completely counterintuitive as I will show in a minute.
The situation is further complicated in New Zealand with the presence of the Maori electorates. These present seven electorates that are only eligible for voting in by Maori. They have a far more homogeneous set of political tendencies than the population at large and so again these “electorate” votes and seats carry unequal weight. The Maori Party has a great opportunity to game the system which I will elaborate on in a later post and get representation in the house at a much higher level than their overall percentage of votes.
A further failure of MMP is the wasted vote - that is, a vote for a party that fails to reach the 5% threshold in the party vote or get at least one electorate seat. The Elections website states the following:
A party vote cast for a party that does not cross threshold has no impact on the number of seats other parties will receive. In this sense it has the same impact as a non-vote - exactly none - except that the voter’s electorate vote will have helped decide that particular contest.
In other words, if you’re going to vote for a party that isn’t going to cross the threshold you may as well not vote for the party vote. The effect is the same. If you’re in a “safe” electorate then not much point in voting at all. Couple this with the results of the recent Elections survey where only 34% correctly identified how the threshold is reached and you have 66% of the population with the potential to waste their vote.
According to the Elections survey 67% of voters now understand that the party vote is the more important vote. Unless, of course, you live in Epsom - where because of another of MMP’s anomalies (that getting an electorate seat enables a party to cross the threshold) - your electorate vote is more important as it affects whether or not the Act party may get 2 seats in the House (based on similar polling in the last election). Voters in Epsom effectively get the opportunity to have 2 party votes.
An effective electoral system should be intuitive - MMP isn’t. Consider a left-leaning voter in Epsom - what is their best tactical voting strategy to best ensure a higher proportion of “left” seats in the House? It’s completely counter-intuitive. Their best option is to vote National for the electorae vote to try and ensure that Act do not win the electorate seat. The best overall result (seats in the House) is achieved by voting for a party they wouldn’t normally vote for. The Labour party should perhaps be instructing their members and followers in Epsom to vote National for the electorate vote - a dangerous strategy, as given people’s confusion and misunderstanding of MMP they may well vote National with their party vote.
How certain can we be that the make-up of Parliament is a true reflection of what the voters intended? With MMP as the voting system, not very.
A nationwide franchise operation has recently rebranded - strong visual, communicates core message well, distinctive, modern. The predominant colour is a shade between maroon and a deep pink. So what’s the problem. The problem is that their brochure has the text in white with the pink/maroon as the background colour on glossy paper. Look at it from a distance and it’s attractive - try to read the copy and it’s a struggle.
Further to this, they have settled on one of the complementary colours being a pale grey - not a problem in itself - but a complete failure when used for the contact details on the business cards (as they have done). Nice form, zero utility.
Reverse text is always somewhat problematic from a legibility perspective as it needs extra font weight to achieve the same visual weight. The kiwibank logo is a classic example where the reverse text “kiwi” is in a heavier weight (”bold” if you like) than the “bank” to create an overall balance.
A contra example is on the Labour Party’s new election website labour08.co.nz where the white text on the red background in the middle panel of changing messages is very tough to read. As it turns out - it’s worse than that - the text which matches the current item is white and the other three items are pink. You can actually click on those items to show the relevant info in that panel. How the average punter would know they are clickable (no visual link or button cues and the cursor doesn’t change) or why they would even want to is another matter. A clear case where the text needs to be of heavier weight to be legible.
Brands and visual identity are powerful tools for shaping perceptions of an organisation. However, when branding makes information difficult to access the customer’s perception will probably not be what was intended. Skillful design first focuses on and retains that focus on utility then on aesthetics.
On his third drink driving charge, three charges of careless driving causing injury were not enough for Judge Anne Kiernan to imprison Jason Peters despite having caused injury to a number of people in an accident at Maramarua in May 2006.
As we noted in a post in May 2007, a judge imprisoned for 18 months a driver with a history of drink driving for being well over the limit. No one hurt, no one killed - over the limit and fell asleep at a petrol station. The family had pleaded for home detention instead of imprisonment. The judge is reported to have said he had “no choice but to sentence Perenara to prison“.
They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Up until late August Smith and Smith Glass had a terrible website - little content and poor design - the 0800 number was writ huge and actually that was the website’s main message “forget the website, just call the 0800 number”. All that has changed with a new smart looking site, but what makes this site so good? You only have to look at the website of their competitor, Supreme Screens, to see why.
Supreme Screens: Repair is always our first choice
Smith & Smith: We repair first
Supreme Screens: Page titled - Repair vs Replace
Smith & Smith: Page titled - Repair or Replace
Supreme Screens: Free repair with no hassles!
Smith & Smith: Repair is hassle free
Supreme Screens: “Windscreens not only prevent ejection of the occupants, they are also the backboard for the airbag. ”
Smith & Smith: “the passenger airbag relies on the windscreen to provide support if the airbag deploys.”
Supreme Screens: “If you have comprehensive car insurance with a windscreen extension, in most cases you will not pay a cent for your windscreen repair.”
Smith & Smith: “If you have full vehicle insurance including cover for glass damage, Smith&Smith® can normally repair your windscreen for free.”
Supreme Screens: A windscreen repair is QUICK
Smith & Smith: Repairing a chip is quicker than replacing a whole windscreen.
Supreme Screens: if you can cover the complete damage with an old sized 50 cent piece…
Smith & Smith: A chip smaller than a 50¢ coin.
How do we sum this up? In keeping with the message of this post I looked to others for a quote.
“Creativity is great, but plagiarism is faster.” - unknown
“he that comes last is commonly best.” - Robert Burton
And that, of course, is what will irk Mike & Sue at Supreme Screens.
I recently presented on the subjects of Usability & Accessibility to Software Quality New Zealand. My thesis - that the root cause or at least a strong contributing factor to websites being difficult to use and/or inaccessible is a failure of mindset not methodology. We examined a number of websites to see how customer centred they were - a key plank of usability in my opinion. You had to be there - but the presentation below, courtesy of Slideshare may be useful. The slides in themselves may not communicate much - but there are notes behind them if you go to the Slideshare site. Alternatively, the full PowerPoint presentation will be available on the SQNZ site very soon.
If your site is one of my examples, thank you - there were so many to choose from.
TelstraClear are offering a new mobile service to compete with Telecom and Vodafone. There are some basic details available in the media - so I though I’d go checking to see if I might be eligible and perhaps save some money on my mobile bill.
First challenge - the TelstraClear website - will it tell me what I want to know? Having got to the “mobile” page I try the links to the pdf documents “About Mobile brochure” and so on - the links are broken to all of them. Tested? I don’t think so.
What’s my big issue? My mobile number is on business cards, websites and more importantly stored in other people’s cellphones and address books. Can I keep my cellphone number if I switch?
To find that out it seems I’m going to have to call them. I don’t have the time to sit in their call centre queue. Waste of time for me and costly for them to service my enquiry by call centre when it could have been handled by the website. Not a great start as far as I’m concerned.
How does this happen? It’s a mindset failure - a focus on the new product/offering and not on the customer.
Seems paradoxical that using up time at the start of the meeting to go over items that aren’t agenda item #1 will give you a shorter meeting in the end.
One of the things we encounter when introducing people to Action Meetings is that they don’t understand why we take so much time at the start of each meeting - and why we repeat this same “time wasting” at each meeting. Surely you only need to do it once - and once we know the Ground Rules do we really have to read them out each time?
Imagine building a house. Why waste time on foundations? You can’t see them so why bother - just get stuck in to putting down a floor and walls and so on. Much faster, yes? No - because it will all start to wobble and break.
It’s just the same with meetings - except that often you can’t see it wobbling and breaking because it’s not a tangible thing. Intangible things, like meetings, need foundations too.
The five or ten minutes we take to get a meeting properly started always pays off in the end.
Rushing into the first agenda item may look like you’re all busy - but there’s a big difference between being busy and being productive.
Did you ever notice that some people say an awful lot in meetings and others say almost nothing? Or, that they flow off information seemed to come from one or two people towards everybody else?
Effective meetings tend to have much more even participation and contribution from all the participants (if your meetings have attendees rather than participants then that’s the start of the problem). Meetings are a tool most effectively used for gathering input from as many of the participants as possible.
So how do meetings typically go? One simple way of finding out is to map the next meeting that you participate in. Its very simple, you draw a map.
Team Meeting - Guess who’s the boss?
The most efficient way to do this is to;
Start with outlining the meeting table and the participants sitting around it, represented by a small circle around the meeting table with the name of each person written next to it.
Draw a circle in the middle of the meeting table which represents speech that has been put forward by one person directed to the rest of the group (and not just one person in particular).
For each 30 seconds that a person is speaking, draw a line connecting their circle to whoever they are directing their speech to.
For instance, if a person is addressing the group as a whole, then draw a line going from their circle to the circle that you have drawn in the middle of the table.
If instead they are only addressing one person in the group, then draw a line between their circle and the person’s circle that they are talking to. If they talk for longer than 30 seconds, then draw a second line between the circles and so on until they have finished talking.
At the end of the meeting you should have an easy to read map which will show you who has done the majority of the speaking and those who have refrained from talking.
If you would like to send me a copy of one of your maps that would be appreciated. I’ll email you back with my analysis. We’ll look at what these maps tell us shortly.
There is a missing child chain letter doing the rounds at the moment.
Warning sign:
“Please pass this to everyone in your address book”
Whenever you see that phrase in an email, alarm bells should go off.
The annoying thing with these hoaxes is that they prey on people’s good nature - and, sadly, our gullibility (although you won’t believe that).
If you get an email that you think may be a hoax - go to Google and put in some key phrases like the name of the person or virus or whatever. Chances are that if it is a hoax that you’ll find out pretty soon. Email the person you got the hoax email from and ask them to let the people know not to pass it on so the chain gets broken.
