For the last few hundred years, a simple assumption has dominated thinking about human nature: when faced with a set of choices, people make the one that’s most likely to serve their personal interests. But behavioural economists say that people often don’t make decisions like this. People often make decisions which are downright irrational, such as taking out subprime mortgages or chain smoking cigarettes faster than Mad Men’s Don Draper (it’s 2012 now, so you don’t have his excuse).

This is interesting from Saffron’s point of view because we’re often tasked with trying to change employees’ behaviour when there may be no direct incentive for them to do so. An employee might wonder why they should bother engaging in cost saving tactics like switching off their computer at the end of the day or boiling one less kettle for tea when it’s not their money that’s being spent in the first place. And the far away reason that they should do so to save the planet and protect future generations doesn’t cut it for everyone. Saffron’s Nick Simons often repeats that you can’t change behaviour unless you can provide people with incentives or disincentives for doing so. But if people aren’t simply driven by their rational self interest, then it could be that we can change behaviour even when we can’t provide a Pavlovian reward or punishment.

And it’s definitely Saffron’s experience that not everyone behaves wholly rationally. One client told us that their employees fail to use their new online expenses system because they didn’t like the change. Clearly some people would rather forgo reimbursement for expenses than have to change the way they do things.

The idea of nudging is based on research that shows that you might be able to persuade people to make different (read, more responsible) decisions by tweaking their environment so that they perceive their options in different ways. For example, studies show that placing fruit at eye level in school canteens can dramatically increase sales. One experiment involved sending vehicle tax avoiders warning letters in plainer English. I haven’t seen the letter but according to The Economist, it went something like this: ‘pay your tax or lose your car.’

 But is this easier said than done? Going back to my example about change management: if people don’t want to change, despite incentives, then to what methods should a hard working instructional designer resort?

Saffron recommends three alternatives:

1. A good relationship between the graphic design and instructional design team is a must for any good e-learning course

Next time you see several PowerPoint screens worth of text think about how it might be represented visually. Rather than writing a couple of screens telling users about a new project management process, why not represent it as a process flow or animation?

2. Forget the theory, focus on behaviour

We all know how easy it is to be hoodwinked by subject matter experts into filling a course with heaps of the theory behind competition law or data protection when what a learner needs to know is what they need to do better or differently in their job. Educate your SMEs so that they know that they’ll never change behaviour if you don’t show people what sort of behaviour they’re expected to perform.

3. Less is more

60 minutes of scenario-based questioning probably won’t be as effective as a 10 or 15 minute course, even if it’s less interactive. If you’re only selecting material that’s absolutely relevant to your audience then you shouldn’t really have any more than 30 minutes’ worth of content anyway. If you do, then consider whether the scope of your course is too large.

Whether or not nudging gets people to stop eating fast food or pay their car tax remains to be seen. But I’m still wondering: could we apply the insights of nudging to e-learning? Many companies already automatically assign courses to their employees’ online learning profiles and send out self-generated emails to remind people to take them. But is there any more that e-learning professionals could take from the economic nudgers? It could certainly work out cheaper than promising to give staff Amazon vouchers or a meal out for two in return for completing training courses.

But just trotting out the figures is a cop out for any self-respecting instructional designer; a massive disservice to what good e-learning should set out to do. Every single fact and figure should have to fight to prove its validity, rather than just being lumped in as a pseudo-supportive argument.

Here at Saffron we like to make a point about the “need-to-know” factor of data or statistics in our learning. Does everyone in your organisation really need to know how many cases were reported to the regulator in the past five years, or how many of those reported were prosecuted? It’s unlikely, because in most cases the training has been commissioned so that after you’ve completed it you can make the right decisions and avoid breaking the law. The focus of the training isn’t past performance, but future decisions.

Say you’re a small telecoms company that receives 250,000 calls from your 50000 customers per year. Last year, your staff logged 5000 suspicious calls, where the caller sounded like they were fraudulently trying to obtain personal account details. But it’s come to light in a recent court case that a private detective’s firm actually made over 10000 fraudulent calls, with a 50% success rate.

Some might just trot out this information as a bullet point list and leave the learner to it. But with just a little thought, we get our “need-to-know” number, where we can summarise the implications of the entire example and position it in a way that’s relevant to the learner by using just one figure.

From the stats, we can imply that 1 in every 25 calls made to the business is potentially fraudulent (total calls/fraudulent calls). This provides the context to the learner without going into overwhelming detail, and gets rid of the bits that aren’t really worthwhile.
The learner can then relate this number to their everyday working life – if they take 50 calls a day, they can see that it’s likely that at least 2 of them could be fraudulent. With this information, the issue becomes much, much more apparent and resonates with the individual.

These “need-to-know” numbers provide context, whilst also arming the learner with knowledge that they can use in their daily routines. They aren’t hard to stumble across – you can often reach them by delving a little deeper into the data. They make the learning digestible, relevant, and can often be brought to life with supporting graphics or scenarios. So think about it next time you’re writing and ask the obvious question – what do learners need to know?

e-Learning has been using this ‘show, don’t tell’ approach for a long time. However, although scenarios and interactions go a long way to involving the learner in the course, I think we need to pay greater attention to the different styles of learning. You’re probably familiar with Fleming’s VAK/VARK model of three ‘types’ of learners: visual, auditory and kinaesthetic. He makes the argument that some learn best through visual aids such as diagrams, others through discussion, and other by physically carrying out tasks. Although I think this is too ‘neat’ a categorisation of learners, as a mixture of learning types is more stimulating than a single format, I find this model useful for considering all the different elements that make up a good course.

Most e-learning caters for visual and auditory learners, by using graphics, providing discussion points and sometimes including a narrator. The part that I would like to focus on in this blog is the neglected ‘kinaesthetic’ element – or what my dad was using to teach me about stars. Obviously we are restricted in this element by our medium: we are not in the room with our users, so we can’t provide tactile learning such as carrying out an experiment. The scenario based approach goes someway to making the learner feel as though they are involved in the process, but I think that there is more that can be done to really immerse them in the course.

We can create virtual kinaesthetic learning in different ways. My school sometimes used a computer based experiment program, which worked in a similar way to the Science Kids website. It let the user change elements of an experiment (such as the voltage of a battery in an electric circuit) and see what the result would be. It created a safe, realistic environment where you could learn by trial and error, and had the gratifying benefit of watching your results ‘happen’ in real time. It was also a lot of fun! These kinds of interactive graphics can be used in courses that cover systems training, to show the consequences of actions in an impactful and memorable way. For example, an interactive simulation where the user had to check safety requirements on a van (with onscreen consequences if the right process was not followed) highlights the importance of following procedure and shows the learner the impact their actions can have.

I also think that we can learn from this fantastic video that explains the fourth dimension using paper cut-outs and an apple (I think the creator may subscribe to the same school of thought as my dad). Again, visual representation allows a very complex subject to be explained in a way that the average person can understand. This technique could easily be translated to an animation, but why not take it further? One of the concepts dealt with here is only being able to see something on your own plane of reality – this could be demonstrated by placing the user’s avatar on a specified plane, and asking them to try and identify objects that exist in different dimensions from what they can see in front of them. As the video demonstrates, this is impossible!

So I would advocate giving the learner more control over scenarios in e-learning. This takes a bit of courage from both instructional designers and clients – to create a truly memorable, behaviour changing course you have to allow people to get things wrong, and learn from their mistakes. The design also needs to be striking to create the desired impact – although, as my dad’s orange simulations showed, they don’t have to be overly complex! 

So, why do I love him? Apart from the fact that he’s funny, it’s the hidden desire to be that know-it-all, to know almost everything there is of any practical worth. Alas, every day I am reminded of how far from this truth I am (and maybe that’s a good thing, but that’s another whole new philosophical debate for another time). Take, for example, the other day when my nephew wanted me to help him with a maths problem. I am one of those many mathematically-challenged individuals, and therefore, had to politely decline his request for assistance. After all, no use confusing him any further!

This incident, in turn, got me thinking about my job as an instructional designer. I declined to help my nephew citing a lack of knowledge on the topic, but here I am, creating courses on topics as technical as avionics to ones that involve a totally different set of skills, such as handling irate customers. How do I do that?

Well, it helps that most of my learners are adults, and they therefore already have a frame of reference in place about what is to come in the e-learning. Deconstructed, this means we design an experience that assists a learner.

So, with this basic premise in mind, I can perform five tasks that will more or less make sure the e-learning is effective:

1. Break the content into small chunks of information.
2. Use text sparingly and use visuals to back up your content.
3. Involve the learner using interactions.
4. Test the learner’s application of the knowledge, not its recall.
5. Guide the learner on where and how to look for more information.

There are various paradigms and theories to back these basics up – Cognitive Load, Cone of Learning, Gagne’s Conditions of Learning theory with the nine events and so on, but my experience has shown that following these five steps without even knowing these theories will help you create an efficient product.

Does that mean that that I don’t need to know these theories? I’ll answer that with a sport analogy – knowing how to dribble does not translate into being a good player. To do that, you need to study the game.

This Sunday (26^th February), Spurs will make the short journey to face neighbours Arsenal, in a fixture commonly referred to as the North London derby. Historically, Arsenal has been the better side, winning 61 of their meetings in contrast to Spurs’ 48. Yet the recent form of both teams this season has led many commentators (and indeed Arsenal fans) to publically share their opinion that this fixture is Tottenham’s to lose. And most have credited this reversal in fortunes to their manager, Harry Redknapp.

I’m not so naïve as to believe that Redknapp’s success hasn’t been due to a combination of factors – notably that he seems to do rather well in the transfer market. However, what’s commonly cited as his predominant strength is the value he places on simplicity of instruction. “People say it’s a complicated game now,” came Redknapp’s voiceover in a video the BBC ran last week, “but the last time I checked there were still two goals and the ball was still round, so it can’t be that much different.” 

It may be a blunt assessment of the modern game, but the statement perfectly espouses Redknapp’s instructional philosophy; to encourage behavioural change, you don’t have to make learning needlessly complicated.

Capello, Ranieri, Scolari, Ancelotti – the dogma of the beautiful game had it that if you wanted to be the best, your club needed a manager who was the football equivalent of a chess Grand Master. These managers would graft their technical vision and tactics onto their players; make them run the lines that they wanted them to run on the pitch. “Players” wasn’t really an accurate term for members of these squad; “puppets” is perhaps more apt, if rather cynical.

An example of some more elaborate football tactics

When Redknapp took charge of Spurs, they were bottom of the Premier League. Without being too reductive, what he did was to give the team the freedom to play without technical and tactical restraints. Most managers would have been terrified by the thought – but what Harry was doing was to let his players play. His success in this approach is evidenced in the fact that one year later Spurs had qualified for the Champions League. Results aside, his players have given his approach the greatest endorsement, agreeing that Redknapp makes the game enjoyable for them.

Instructional design that focuses on unnecessary technical aspects is akin to the ultra-tactical approach to football management – you might get the result and encourage the behavioural change you’re after in the long term, but it will take longer to embed the knowledge and will be a struggle for your learners to adapt to. You also find that as soon as a situation alters from your predefined “gameplan”, or the process you’ve outlined step-by-step-by-yet-another-step, your learners won’t be able to adapt.

At the very strong risk of resorting to cliché and treading old ground, the best instructional design encourages behavioural change by allowing learners to relate information to frameworks they know already, a process of rediscovery and revision; not redesigning the wheel. More importantly, it tests them first, and only steps in to give corrective feedback if required. Let learners prove what they already know before adding to it if necessary; don’t burden them with unnecessary statistics or feedback.

 His tax affairs may be complex but when it comes to instructions Harry keeps it simple

So, how can we adapt Harry’s instructional style to design a process learning course, for instance? Well, give the learner the objective of the process (put the ball in the goal), their role in the process (play on the left, halfway up the pitch), and let them know the way to go about achieving the objective (shoot, or pass it to a player wearing the same shirt as you who can).

Does it need to be much more complicated than that? In some circumstances, maybe, but I bet if you think hard about it there’s a lot of subjects that come to mind that are currently befuddling learners in their complexity that can be put in uncomplicated terms. This then gives scope for learner creativity and improvisation, something that Nick Simons has discussed in his previous blog (http://www.saffroninteractive.com/the-great-learning/).

 It’s not about dumbing down content – it’s about having the courage to be clear and trusting what your learners already know. That’s what ‘arry ‘as recognised – what’s the least you need to tell them?

Last weekend we watched a pre-recorded University Challenge episode. Both housemates were shouting out answers and the one who wasn’t doing so well accused the other of cheating. He decided she must have seen this one before (surely her general knowledge couldn’t match that of a panel of Oxbridge swots?), yet she was adamant she hadn’t.

Tensions rising, we carried on in this vein until two things happened:

1. Jeremy Paxman asked a question about the size of African countries. “ETHIOPIA” I cried, and I was right.
2. Jeremy asked a mathsy question, “SEXY PRIME THE ANSWER IS SEXY PRIME” I yelled, and again I was spot on.
   

I never know the answers to geography and maths questions. Never. And no, I hadn’t recently returned from a meditative retreat where I had succeeded in opening up new areas of my mind, allowing me to discover and harness never before accessed knowledge. I had seen this episode before.

But that wasn’t enough for me to remember the answers to all the questions, or even to have realised that I had seen the episode before until this happened. I remembered the answers, and realised I had seen it before, because:

1. The first time I’d seen the show I had attempted to answer the African countries question and got it wrong, as had the University Challenger (pah!) and Paxman had then given us the right answer.
2. First time round, I had found Paxman saying ‘sexy prime’ funny. I had chuckled.

The two lessons that I have taken from this sequence of events are:

1. Immediate and corrective feedback works… test, and then tell.
   The questions you ask your learners should be drawn from the key messages you are trying to get across. And if your learners attempt to answer a question and are then given corrective feedback they are far more likely to remember this key message than if it’s just been ‘told’ to them.
2. Making it funny makes it memorable.
   Remember the girl who in your class at school who did quite well in P.E? Probably not. Remember the girl who tripped her way onto the stage to collect a certificate? It’s more likely. If you’re going to try and achieve a light and humorous tone then decide this at the beginning of the instructional design process. Get as much information about your learners from your SMEs, for instance, what characterises them? Do they have examples of popular internal communications that they can show you? This will help you to build up a picture of your learners and help to gauge what they may find funny.

Who would have thought Jeremy Paxman and "Sexy Primes" could be related to learning outcomes

And so I outed my sly housemate’s cover and she later admitted she had seen that episode before. What are your thoughts? Do you have any similar anecdotes? If so, please comment below. Or if, like me, you find sexy primes amusing, check them out on wikipedia You’ll probably be disappointed, they’re not very funny.

So, shameless self-endorsement over, let’s talk about gamification! In previous posts I have attempted to provide an overview of what the term means, but the problem is that gamification can actually be quite hard to define.  It doesn’t really have an OED-worthy succinct explanation, as it’s a constantly evolving collection of ideas and design theories rather than a concept with fixed parameters. But with gamification rapidly becoming a buzzword in e-learning, now seems a good time to go back to the basics and get to grips with how gamification applies to our industry. As the pro gamers preach to e-learning professionals to think more like game designers, exactly what inspiration should designers and developers be taking?

When you break it down, the structures of gamification rely on design techniques or “mechanics” taken from popular games, which have then been applied to other sectors such as social media, advertising and e-learning.  This doesn’t mean that we have to embrace a ‘shoot ‘em up’ style of systems training, but instead developers can use this collection of ideas to pick and choose the best mechanics to achieve their goals.

I am going to share with you some simple game mechanics and suggest how they might be applied to e-learning, or even to other business situations. Hopefully by the time you’ve finished reading you’ll be able to start implementing your own gamification experiments (it’s a lot easier than people think!)

Here are my 3 simple gaming mechanics:

The Appointment Dynamic

“Be at a certain place at a certain time and you will receive a certain result”

This may not sound very game-like at first, but in fact this simple concept is used almost constantly in games, and lots of other places too. When you think about it, our daily routines have conditioned us to expect certain things to happen at certain times, whether that’s our morning train pulling into the station or Eastenders coming on around teatime. Game developers have used this fundamental idea in hugely successful games such as Farmville where at regular intervals player need to complete activities in order to maintain the upkeep of their virtual farm (this game currently has over 70 million players). Another example some people may remember are the Tamagotchi toys a few years back which had people waking up at all hours of the day to pick up virtual dog…well you get the idea! It is this simple expectation of time managements that keeps people subconsciously coming back and developing regular behaviours.

Idea – When asking staff to do timesheets instead of allowing them to be filled in any time only open the programme in set windows during the day? Often the difficulty with enforcing an area like time sheet compliance is that people don’t condition it as part of their daily routine. Obviously there may be a period of pain with clashes when this gets introduced but over a few weeks habits and compliance will occur.

Achievement Badges

Games use a variety of achievement based rewards to keep users playing. This ranges from digital medals in ‘Call of Duty’ to exclusive character upgrades in ‘World of Warcraft’. This is one of the more widely recognised gamification mechanics and is used very effectively by services such as Foursquare to provide motivation for users to take desired actions. This technique works best when it’s overlaid onto a social platform, or an online game like Warcraft, as the main performance driver is not that the user can see their achievements, but that they know others will.

Idea: Why not reward positive behaviours on your company intranet by allowing employees to display achievement badges on their profiles?

In case you missed the seminar I also looked at how Accenture have been using this simple idea you can find the full story here.

Rate of variable reward

This is a concept that originated long before gamification was ever heard of. It’s also one of the most effective, as proved by its longevity. Research has shown that humans are susceptible to scenarios where there is a degree of the unknown: the best example of this is gambling and is the main reason why it can be so addictive. Some of the games that currently have the highest levels of user playtime and engagement are built around this idea . It is illustrated very well by titles such as Star Wars “ The Old Republic” which uses a sliding scale of probabilities to randomise rewards that players receive whilst playing the game and often carrying out highly repetitive tasks. So, for example, when you open a chest containing items there is a high likelihood you will receive an average one, but a slim chance you will receive something better than you expected and a minute chance that you get something amazing!

When combined with other mechanics such as progress bars this keeps players absolutely hooked, even when doing more mundane aspects of the game, because there is a chance that something extraordinary might happen. The other great thing about the game environment is that it provides developers with almost constant feedback on a mechanic like this as they can analyse the habits of players in this virtual setting, which they manage. This means they can estimate the best probabilities to keep people engaged to the highest level possible without devaluing their rewards.

Idea: If you are trying to increase participation in filling in timesheets when they are due; why not track completion rates within a certain time period (appointment dynamic) and offer a prize draw for those who have completed and passed within the window (variable reward). You could even go a step further and award each of the users who have made it into the draw a badge to display on their intranet profile…..All of sudden timesheets are the talk of the office!

So, gamification isn’t just about having fun, it’s a valuable way to engage users and achieve serious business or learning objectives. The mechanics that I have talked about here are just some of the more common techniques that those sneaky game designers use to keep people coming back time after time. There are many more elaborate ones but hopefully these are enough to get started!

Stay tuned for more ideas around gamification and have a look at some in action from our latest show case at Learning Technologies "The Bribery Act Challenge"

The Bribery Act Challenge Login

Saffron Interactive is proud to once again be a main sponsor and exhibitor at the Learning and Technologies Conference, Europe’s leading showcase of technology-supported workplace learning. Visit us at Stand 33 to meet the team and try the Bribery Act Challenge! The exhibition is free to attend on January 25th and 26th  at Olympia 2, London, and there is still time to register for a ticket. Click here for more details.

We have exciting plans for this year’s event:

The Bribery Act Challenge Gamification – the use of game design techniques and mechanics to solve problems and engage audiences – is set to be one of the fastest growing areas in L&D this year. We’ve created a mobile app that brings together our ideas on serious games, best practice in mobile learning and delivering effective assessment, using the Bribery Act for illustration. Use your own mobile device to connect to the wireless network on our stand or use our mobile devices to take the challenge. You can even follow the leader board to see if you have the highest score!

Conference special guest speaker Jonathan Garrett, Head of Sustainability at Balfour Beatty, will explain how the organisation’s sustainability programme changed hearts and minds. Saffron Interactive’s ground-breaking e-learning which aims to persuade over 50,000 learners globally, speaking a variety of languages and from a wide range of backgrounds, to commit to a more sustainable way of living and working. Conference delegates can hear the Balfour Beatty story on floor 2, 26th January at 2pm. 

Visit us on stand 33 to see how our innovative approaches can change behaviours and improve performance at your organisation.

Competition: Win a Sony S Android tablet! “A top-quality tablet, with a thoughtful design and a host of useful software and extras” says PC Pro magazine. We have one of these game-changing tablets to give away to the winner of our ‘Gamification Survey’. Conference delegates will receive their entry slip at the start of the day with their welcome pack from the show organisers.

To be in with a chance of winning please hand these in to us on Stand 33.

Free seminar : Game On or Game Over?

Waiting to be convinced that gamification is right for your company? Or maybe you just want to find out more about the possibilities of this exciting new trend? In two seminars Alex Webb and Nick Baum from Saffron will conduct a live and lively debate on the pros and cons of gamification for workplace learning. Whether you’re a gamification guru or a complete novice, this promises to be an informative and playful session!

Times:

25th January at 12.15pm, Theatre 8, Learning and Skills Exhibition (lower floor)

26th January at 2pm, Theatre 1, Learning Technologies Exhibition (upper floor)

 If you would like to arrange a chat with us over the course of the event please get in touch. We look forward to seeing you in Kensington Olympia next week!

 National Plain English Day, which took place at the tail end of last year, saw The Plain English Campaign’s ardent members shredding jargon-filled documents to mirror the event which took place on Parliament Green in Westminster in 1979, at its founding. 

Photo of original shredding, taken from www.plainenglish.co.uk

 But it wasn’t only the Plain English Campaign that stepped in to defend us from the gobbledygook clotted annals of the public information machine last year. Indeed, back in April, one of the Saffron IDs blogged about Orwell’s six rules of simple English, providing tips for how to improve the language used in e-learning courses. Another of my colleagues sent me an article on the topic by Dan Pallotta, from the Harvard Business Review. Through the link, you can cast your vote for your ‘all-time worst business buzzword’- at the moment, ‘thinking outside the box’ is winning and it’s due to the ubiquitous use of terms like these that Dan bemoans how he doesn’t ‘understand what anyone is saying anymore.’ He’s not alone. More and more bloggers, journalists and TV presenters are starting to talk about the terrible state of language in the workplace.

 Of course, this debate didn’t begin in 2011. The host of ‘tone of voice’ and writing consultancy firms that promise to banish jargon from your corporate culture for good haven’t popped up overnight. One Independent columnist wrote back in 2007: ‘I think my choice of word for banning would be "workshop."’ Other terms that get poo-pooed in the article are ‘elephant in the room’, ‘it’s not rocket science’, ‘push the needle’, ‘shoot the puppy’, ‘touch base’, ‘hit the ground running’, ‘mentoring’, ‘heads up’, ‘solutions’ and ‘get our ducks in a row.’ My favourite example of this trend towards jargon busting comes from a man quoted in a newspaper article on the topic, who shall remain un-named:

"Anyone who uses the word ‘workshop’ who isn’t connected with light engineering is a w***er."

Why does non plain English usage generate such hostility? Is it because it makes people feel stupid? Or is it because it divides people into in-groups (those who know the jargon) and out-groups (those that don’t)? Language certainly can be divisive. It was one of the catalysts for the Protestant Reformation, has caused controversy in Irish courts when defendants have asked for the right to give evidence in Irish and creates a lamentable division along social lines (think of the ‘common flower girl’ who passes as a ‘Lady’ by changing her accent). Whatever the reasons, I’m not sure that I agree that all jargon is meaningless and am uncomfortable with the Plain English Campaign’s ‘purification’ tactics or the idea of ‘banning’ words from our language.

Dan Pallotta is surely right when he says that the over-use of jargon in the workplace means that he, and perhaps many others, don’t understand a lot of what’s being said anymore. But jargon is only jargon if you don’t know what it means. The feeling of bewilderment that Dan describes in his blog is usually caused when people use language without considering their audience, as the Plain English Campaign rightly acknowledges in its aim to rid all public communication of jargon. Whilst we might not thank our doctor for telling us that the pain in our chest is caused by aortic calcification we wouldn’t object if our doctor reported a diagnosis of aortic calcification on the prescription that you’ll hand to the pharmacist.

But perhaps this is an unfitting metaphor. After all, aortic calcification is a precise term that refers to an equally precise problem. Business-speak’s many detractors would say that terms like ‘joined up thinking’ and ‘moving forward’ are general terms used precisely when people don’t really know what they mean or what they want to say. But I might have to disagree, at least in part. As cringe inducing as terms like ‘joined up thinking’, ‘pushing the envelope’, ‘deep dive’ and ‘off the shelf’ are, they do seem to mean something to the community of people who uses them. In which case, as long as it’s kept within the office, business speak might aid as opposed to hinder understanding.

Plus, is business-speak any more cringe inducing than some of the plain English that seems to be replacing it? Take Innocent’s brand literature as a case in point. Their fruit smoothie bottles tell you to ‘shake it up baby’ before drinking and promises to always eat its greens. I don’t want my fruit smoothie to have a personality. We’re grown ups and it’s belittling. Pret’s ‘hello I’m your new toastie, please eat me’ packaging is even worse.

I don’t disagree with the Plain English Campaign’s original complaint, but it seems that we’ve gone from one extreme to another when it comes to the language used in public communication. I don’t want to be spoken to by HMRC’s disembodied cipher or a personified toastie. Here’s to hoping that 2012 brings a new, more moderate, use of the English language.