You have a message that you want to deliver to your users. Maybe you are trying to explain a concept, or maybe you are attempting to sell a product. You know what message you are trying to convey, but is it clear to everyone else? Shouting the message NI GIB SRETTEL (that’s “in big letters” backwards) doesn’t make a message clearer. All it does is make the message bigger. Need an example?

Yesterday, I had to take someone to the airport. I haven’t been to the airport in a couple of years, but I didn’t expect to find the drive over to be much different than before. It was pretty much the same, except for one thing. All along the road next to the airport is a line of park and fly parking lots, just as there have always been. And like always, each one contained lots of cars and activity - except one. One lonely lot was almost completely devoid of cars or people. That lot had one really big sign that read, “CELL PHONE LOT”.

Cell phone lot? I immediately looked down at the ground to see if there were tiny cell phones “parked” in each parking space, but as far as I could tell, there were none. I could see, on the far side of the lot, another sign. It also read, in big, bold, letters, “CELL PHONE LOT”. Great, twice now, I’ve been told in big bold letters what this place was, but the big letters didn’t make it any clearer to me. I still had no idea what the heck a cell phone lot was. The only thing I could think of was that maybe airport security had gotten so tight, that now everyone was required to leave their cell phones behind while traveling, and this parking lot was the place to leave them.

After returning home, I ran a search on the internet for “cell phone lot” and found the answer to what this mysterious thing is. Apparently it’s common at airports, though I don’t know how long these things have been around. Here’s a good explanation of it from the Seatac airport web site.

There are more than 40 parking spots available. Drivers can wait in the lot until arriving passengers have deplaned, collected luggage and called to be picked up outside of Baggage Claim. Drivers must stay with their vehicles. The Cell Phone Lot not only provides a convenient place for waiting for arriving flights, but also helps keep traffic on the airport drives moving smoothly.

Ok, so, it’s a place where I can hang out and wait when picking up an arriving passenger, and when that passenger calls me on my cell phone, I can leave the lot and go pick her up. Makes sense now, and I like the concept. That’s a lot better than circling the airport a hundred times waiting for someone to come out of the baggage claim area.

Now, I’m not sure exactly what the sign should have said so that I would have understood the message, but some sort of short explanation would have been helpful. Maybe under the Cell Phone Lot sign, another sign that read “Waiting area for passenger pickup” or something similar would have clarified things a bit.

My point is that even though you think your message is loud and clear because you’ve shouted it loudly to everyone, doesn’t mean that anyone really understands what it is you are shouting about. If you look around and your parking lot is always empty (or no one seems to be understanding your message or taking the action you expected them to take), perhaps you should ask others if they understand your message. If they look for cell phones lying on the ground, maybe you should consider rewording your message to make it clearer, not bigger.

(from Smash Mouth. "AllStar" Astro Lounge. Interscope Records, 1999.)

Posted on November 5th, 2007 by DazzlinDonna
Filed under: Content