Author: Lloyd Morgan
-
Text-Only Ads are the Most Effective
Advertisers are “often wrong about what attracts our attention” is the conclusion of a usability study looking at how users interact with online advertising. The study, published in the report Eyetracking Web Usability by the Nielsen Norman Group (a usability consultancy firm from Jakob Nielsen and Kara Pernice), suggests that text-only advertising is the most…
-
Complexity and Autonomy Key to Workplace Satisfaction
Work complexity and autonomy are the two largest factors in deciding workplace satisfaction, suggested findings reported in a 1985 article in The New York Times. The findings came from research by Dr. Jeylan T. Mortimer and Dr. Melvin L. Kohn and seems to agree with a more recent discussion on the three keys to programmer…
-
Journalism Online and Internet Entrepreneurship
In profiling a number of ‘online journalism entrepreneurs’, The New York Times does a good job of providing a relatively cliché-free, high-level overview of the current state of online news publishing. The article looks at the “new breed” of blog-based journalists, a few business models, and the problems associated with advertising online. There’s nothing new…
-
Price Reductions and Cognitive Fluency
If the mental calculation required to determine the discount given on a product is difficult then we often misjudge the magnitude of the reduction. This “ease-of-computation” effect for judging price reductions is obviously related to other recent studies looking at ‘cognitive fluency‘ and is another way to manipulate and be manipulated through product pricing. Consumers’…
-
Askers, Guessers and the ‘Disease to Please’
Saying No to seemingly unreasonable requests and unwanted invitations is easy for some and a gruelling mental challenge for others. This disparity between responses can be explained by looking at the behavioural differences between Askers and Guessers: In Ask culture, people grow up believing they can ask for anything–a favour, a pay rise–fully realising the…
-
Year Two in Review
Another year, a further 445 posts and an additional 17,790 spam comments have passed (and 453 legitimate comments, for which I am eternally grateful–thanks!) and Lone Gunman is now two years old. Somewhat delayed since I’ve recently moved to the Netherlands, here are the best things I’ve read on the Internet and posted here over…
-
Why Designers Need Statistics
The proliferation of infographics online is helping to make a broad, somewhat statistically illiterate, audience aware of important data and trends. For those designing these infographics, therefore, there is a need that they understand their process intimately–from data collection to illustration–in order to analyse it honestly and with meaning. Through a “showcase of bad infographics”,…
-
For an Education in Statistics
The ability to understand data and its analyses is becoming more important in many aspects of our lives–especially government–says Clive Thompson, and as such statistical literacy is becoming an important skill. Using recent arguments used by some confused climate change sceptics to show why it is important, Thompson explains briefly why we should learn the…
-
Routine, Sleep and Premature Death
Sleeping for less that six hours a night is correlated strongly with an increased risk of premature death over a 25-year period (a 12% increase in the likelihood of your premature death, to be exact). That’s the conclusion from an extensive report (studying 1.5 million people) convincingly showing the link between quality sleep and one’s…