Re: Television campaign in Pakistan

[Guest guest]

Dear all

With reference to the mail of Raj Doctor, i too came across an interesting

interpretation of our indian IEC flip charts and how it is being misunderstood

among homeless injecting drug users.

A flipchart containing four pictures to convey information on four routes of

transmission is being interpretaed true for the three viz sexual route, blood

and related products and sharing of infected syringes but while the last picture

of a pregnant woman is being interpreted as ' having sex with pregnant woman has

even higher risk of getting infection'!!!

Mr. Raj, What can be done in this regard?

Regards

Mayur

E-mail:<trivedimayur76@...>

[Guest guest]

Hello to the group -

I was reminded by the posts on this theme of the early days of the

design and legibility of social security forms when they

determined the gender of the applicant by the question - SEX.

Obviously they expected people to write M or F but there were some

in our midst who couldn't write M or F honestly and there were no

other categories.

Most of my ocker smart mates just wrote YES PLEASE against the

question.

It illustrates the necessity that whenever we do anything that we

expect to get wide appeal like the features of a car for instance

or that is likely to produce behaviour change; that we field test

the effort.

Advertisers with good campaigns do it before they spend the

absolute fortunes in marketing images.

We who spend hours of our lives trying to help others assimilate

information and deal with destructive myths need to do the same.

One of the processes is to design the project or program and then

to 'FOCUS TEST' it with the people who are likely to need the

information.

It is absolutely amazing every time I have participated in a focus

group experience how much collective wisdom arises and how much

even the designers learn from the process.

Part of the process is to engage the folk in understanding what

messages we are trying to achieve and in the example given by my

friend Mayur with the IEC flipcharts, it would have been just as

easy to show a pregnant woman with an adjoining baby image

emblazoned with a big red + and achieved a better message

outcome.

One of the things I noticed when I was in India was for a mono

lingual english speaking and reading person like me how difficult

I found it getting around India and finding streets and street

numbers. Of course it is because the written languages are

different and I understand that there are nearly thirty of them

and very few people can read them all and some can't read any so

if we are going to use images lets try to engage those who might

look at them and ask ahead of time what the image is saying to

them and if it is saying the wrong thing how might it be better

drawn.

Surely that is one way to go.

Even though I am physically in Melbourne right now, every minute

of everyday I am emotionally either in India or in Africa via this

magnificent electronic association with which we uphold each

other. I can't wait for the war to end so I can come back and I

hope that travelling as an aussie doesn't impact on the freedoms

we all enjoyed prior to the 'coalition of the willing' playing

God.

Geoffrey

e-MAIL <gheaviside@...>