When communication fails the tennis-ball test

The more messages we receive at the same time or in close proximity, the less likely it is that we will engage with or respond to any of them.

In their excellent book Writing for Busy Readers, Todd Rogers and Jessica Lasky-Fink examine this further and show the proof.

In one experiment, they sent two versions of a political fundraising email to over 750,000 potential donors. The first version contained six paragraphs and several compelling facts. In the second version, they cut the email length in half by arbitrarily deleting every other paragraph.

Despite the aggresive editing meaning the email made less sense if read in full (and despite the prevailing wisdom in fundraising being that longer is better) the concise version raised 16% more than the original.

Another test saw researchers providing information 1,500 participants about climate change and offering suggestions for useful action. Some of the participants were provided with a list of 20 easy beneficial actions (such as turning off lights) while other groups were provided with one, five or ten options. On average, each person presented with fewer actions took two actions more than those who received the list of 20.

In the words of Rogers and Lasky-Fink, “It’s possible that participants who were provided with 20 suggested actions found the message overwhelming and couldn’t decide which ones to perform [and it] simply deterred some from from reading the actions at all. We don’t know the cognitive mechanism at work, but we do know that readers who were given more options were less likely to do any of them.”

This poses a challenge to marketers, who often feel compelled to throw more rather than fewer tennis balls into the mix.

“The ad space was costly, so focusing on one message feels a wasted opportunity… can we mention these other things as well? And I know we’re emailing people to get them to sign up to the event on Saturday, but can we include these special offers and news of our next store opening, too?”

Yes, but as Rogers and Lasky-Fink have shown, you do so to your detriment. Each additional message is another tennis ball – and eventually your audience will drop them all.

Our inability or reluctance to tease apart, understand and respond to the various messages thrown at us increases in line with the number of messages.

It’s reasonable to assume this is even more the case when we are pressured by limited time or increased stress.

Sending you in circles

I recall arriving at a service station on the M4 back in the early 2000s, just after it had undergone a makeover as part of the new Moto brand. The branding included new way-finding signage.

Coming off the motorway and into the service station I was confronted by an array of signs pointing out where the petrol station was, where HGVs should go, where caravans should go, what the speed limit was, where the exit was, and where the car park was.

These signs were often together in groups up or along a pole. I’ve written previously about the origins of the UK road signage system, including how signs were speed-tested to ensure people could read and understand them

Each of the individual signs at the service station was clear enough. But the grouping of three or more on a pole, coupled with there being several poles in relatively close proximity, and all of this encountered post-motorway driving (where signs appear comparatively infrequently) made the task of reading and processing the signs exceptionally difficult.

I therefore found myself in the wrong car park and apologising for being there without the requisite caravan. Suffice to say, I was not alone.

The government’s Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions (TSRGD) prescribes the design and conditions of use of traffic signs on or near roads in England, Scotland and Wales. In theory, the TSRGD has applied to service stations since 1994. Yet even to this day, service-station signage seems to exist in some kind of parallel universe where throwing as many tennis balls at drivers as possible is still far too common.

An excellent article on the Motorway Services Online website takes a wonderfully deep dive into the subject.

Train of thought

Stood in the vestibule of a crowded train, I was struck by the high number of visual messages in and around the doorway. I counted 11.

Some explained the general opening and closing of doors, and what to do and not do near the doors. Others explained how to open the doors in an emergency. Others explained how to stop the train in an emergency. Another contained a paragraph of text about the use of CCTV. Another talked at similar length about not stopping the train if you feel ill. And then there was an advert or two.

Whiling away time on the journey, this gave me plenty to read… and ponder. Such as how well do these messages work for people in an emergency?

My fear is that people under stress will struggle. The clutter of stickers, text and arrows is highly likely to delay people from taking the action they need at that moment, like opening the doors and getting out. The result could be fatal.

On another trip, I was lucky enough to bag a seat. Looking up, I noticed four signs in close proximity. Each was a different size – a sure sign (no pun intended) there had been no consideration of how they would look or work when seen together.

One denoted priority seats for people such as pregnant women and the elderly and. Two of the others related to emergencies: one with an arrow pointing in the direction of fire extinguishers and the like, the other with an arrow pointing in the direction of the nearest exit. While arrows on both these signs pointed in the same direction, the arrow on the exit sign pointed directly at the pictograms on the priority seating sign, and another sign placed between the two emergency signs carried an arrow pointing in the opposite direction to denote the way to the nearest toilet.

Maybe all of this is obvious enough while your train tootles its way along the track and you’ve plenty of time to figure things out. But in an emergency it could be a dangerously confusing jumble akin to several tennis balls coming at you from different directions at the same time.

Pictograms of people plus an arrow could be construed as “people go this way”. And one arrow pointing one way followed by another pointing the other way could delay action by precious seconds or lead to a log-jam of people heading in opposite directions.

Emergencies on trains are thankfully rare. But that doesn’t mean these things should be overlooked. Especially when doing things better is actually pretty simple.

Below is the row of signs in question, together with a suggestion for more coherent order.

While this solution took only a few minutes to create and might be improved further, it makes some important changes:

• The two smaller signs are placed one above the other on the right. The toilet sign has been changed from black to navy to match the priority seating sign as the differing colours serve no discernible purpose.
• The two emergency signs are made the same height and placed together. The text below the pictograms has been changed from ‘Located by entrance doors’ to ‘Located by exit’. This is shorter and avoids the confusion of saying ‘entrance’ on one sign and ‘exit’ on another when referring to the same set of doors.

A more thorough approach would be for the government to create signage regulations akin to the TSRGD. This could establish best practice and increase consistency across different train operating companies (with adaptations to account for the positions of items such as emergency stop levers in different types of carriage).

Ultimately, however, whether you’re promoting a fire sale or directing people to a fire exit, aim to throw one ball, not ten – especially when catching it really matters.