Health and Safety But Fun

Working with a number of subject matter experts, we were able to put together a framework of the core health and safety risks in a typical retail-based workplace. We then went to work applying some of our key principles…

Simple

Attention span is largely task-dependent; and although different research disputes exactly what the average attention span is, all agree it’s not long. The average length of a video on YouTube is 11.7 minutes [statista.com] , but the average video is only watched 50-60% of the way through [uhurunetwork.com]. Taking this into account, we’ve divided up the whole course into small, bite-sized chunks of information. None of it takes more than a few minutes to work through and none of it is complex.

Engaging

Studies tell us that people have a longer attention span when they are doing something enjoyable or intrinsically motivating – this is why it’s so important to us that we make our learning engaging. If something’s not engaging then it’s not going to get used; and if it’s not used then what’s the point? We injected humour throughout, after all, an effective way to make someone remember something is to make them laugh [Avner Ziv]. We also added a gaming element to the course too. Games are naturally designed to engage and motivate the player, so why wouldn’t we want to include one in our course?

Beautiful

We’re drawn to beautiful things. So why wouldn’t we want to make beautiful looking courses? Our health and safety course is full of hand drawn colourful characters, humourous icons and emotive backgrounds. Not only does this set the tone for the course, but it’s different to what most people expect health and safety training to look like – and in turn this makes them take note. We also spend time to ensure it’s intuitive. Nobody wants to take a course on how to use a course. We’ve worked with the team at Southampton’s Solent University, who track eye movement and create a ‘heat map’ of where you spend time looking throughout the course. This allows us to position information in the place where your eyes naturally fall.