I’m in Malaysia today running a mental workshop [ie: a weird one, not a workshop for the challenged. Then again …] so I apologise for this post, it was a rush job because SHOCK HORROR PROBE, I didn’t pre-write it.
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit too mnay porbelms.
Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by itslef but the wrod as a wlohe.
OK … OK … so that’s nothing new, but it’s still pretty interesting … however one of the things we’re working on at the moment is how people gather information on a website.
The thing is, the way many sites are laid out is very much from a Western perspective – where all the information is grouped in little blocks – however there are many other cultures that consume information in a much more ‘scattergun’ approach, where their eyes literally take in a bunch of stuff all at once and then interpret it from there … so what this results in is some companies having a much less effective digital strategy than they could have simply because they assumed there was a universal way to consume information.
Many agencies and planners talk about ‘culture’ but what they tend to mean is knowing incredibly general stuff like what a certain country/culture likes to eat or what their favourite activities are … and whilst knowing that sort of stuff has its uses, knowing why people act/think/feel the way they do is far more powerful, beneficial and bloody cultural, so if you want to jump on the culture bandwagon, at least have the decency to know what is expected of you if you want to stay on it.