"Shoppers are likely to abandon a website if it takes longer than four seconds to load, a survey suggests.

It found 75% of the 1,058 people asked would not return to websites that took longer than four seconds to load." Akamai study as reported on the BBC.

It's a study of online shopping habits, but I wonder if the same holds for cultural sector sites. I guess that says something either about my knowledge of existing audience evaluation or the paucity of existing information.

The article doesn't report whether the study analysed the results by gender, but this article, Key Website Research Highlights Gender Bias, suggests that gender makes a big difference to the user experience:

"Despite the parity of target audience, the results found that 94% of the sites displayed a masculine orientation with just 2% displaying a typically female bias."

Interesting use of location-aware devices at the Tower of London.

"The new game employs HP's iPAQ handheld devices and location sensors to trigger the appropriate digital file, which includes voices, images, music and clues.

HP said that developing the new game has helped it to explore opportunities for new products and services that will emerge around the delivery of location and other context-based experiences."

Via the BCS.

I've always wanted to do something like a 'museum outside the walls' where hand-held devices or mobile phones deliver content based on your location. They could be used in walking tours, or signs could let people know that content is available. London has so many layers of history, and the Museum has so much content about London's histories.