Studio Journal Episode 6 – Big Donation

Today I trucked a carload of items to Global Thrift, the charity I talked about last time.  As part of my donation, I gave them two bronze statues that I am pretty sure are quite valuable.  My grandparents got them in China back in the days when going to China was a really rare kind of thing to do.  At first, I thought it was kind of a waste to donate this to a thrift store that would probably undervalue it and sell it for a fraction of what it is worth.  If I donated it to a charity art auction or something like that they might net a better take for the charities.  But I don’t have time to figure that out since I move in a week.  When I gave them the statues, I mentioned that they were valuable and they seemed really psyched to have such cool looking statues.  But I have a feeling that my fears will come true.  Part of me wants to go in to the store next week and see what they price tag is.  But I think maybe I shouldn’t or I will probably have an odd sort of buyer’s remorse.

I still have a lot of stuff to donate because my car can only fit so much.  Plus I have the three big things that I can’t fit in the car at all, nor can I lift them myself.  I am hoping that Brad and his trusty SUV can help me bring those in.  But he decided to go on vacation to NYC with his wonderful family.  So I have to wait until next weekend, the day before I move.  That will stress me out to no end, but what can I do?  Practice my coping skills I guess :-). 

This Week in EID - Episode 17

Delight is one of the best things you can add to a user experience.  After you have achieved the UI costs of entry (easy to learn, easy to use, easy to recover from errors), this is the competitive advantage that separates the winners from the losers.  Doesn’t matter if you are talking about the cozy restaurant on the street corner or the high tech big data visualization dashboard.

The EID blog is like a quarter you find on the street. It may not be enough to change your life, but it is a nice small benefit that can make your day.  Do analogies work to get a point across?  

Do you shy away from information that you don’t really want to hear?  The cheesecake has enough fat for six days.  Your 401(k) will never be enough if you don’t put more in.  Of course, ignoring it doesn’t make it go away, but it does make it go away for right now.  

My point about the militarization of the police was not a post about Ferguson, it was about the media and their lack of statistical literacy.  They do this over and over.  Remember the 10,000 hour rule of practice?  It drove the researcher who did the original work to post on his web site that “we should never delegate science reporting to the media.”  

Studio Journal Episode 5 - Last chance donations

In a previous entry, I retold the story about trying to get someone to come pick up the furniture I want to give away.  But none of them have a pickup date before mid-September, which is too late for me.  So I am stuck. 

For the smaller items, I can manhandle them into my car and bring them to Global Thrift.  They donate the sales proceeds to some very worthy causes.  Out of curiosity, I asked the coordinator if he knew of any place that accepted food donations.  He said that I could leave it on the stoop of the church soup kitchen across the street and it would get snapped up pretty quick.  Perhaps the church could use it, but there are so many regulations about food that there is probably a lot they would not be allowed to.  But their customers – they are a different story.  I would have never thought of this, it seems like littering.  But if it will help people who can really use the food, I guess it is worth a shot? 

Has anyone ever tried something like this?

Programmable ethics in your car

There was a really fascinating editorial at Wired about self-driving cars and liability.  I know, I know – that sounds like a pretty boring topic.  But read on.

One of the problems with self-driving cars is not the engineering but the liability.  If your self-driving car is about to hit five people who jumped out into the road, should it swerve and hit a single person instead?  You might think that hitting one person is better than hitting five.  But you also might think that swerving into someone is an intentional act and therefore worse.  This example is based on the famous trolley problem that I have written about before.  So which should the car do?  And could the person/people who get hit sue because someone consciously made the choice to program the car that way?

But this is where the editorial gets interesting.  You can imagine a whole bunch of options for the car.  Should it decide based on some characteristics of the people?  Maybe swerving into an adult is preferred to hitting the group of five, but swerving into a child is not?  But of course this gives us the slippery slope.  What if it swerves into males but not females?  Obese smokers but not healthy marathon runners?  What if it swerves into gas-guzzling SUVs, but not Priuses?

To offload these tough questions, what if the car lets you set your preferences yourself?  Would you allow each driver to decide?  Maybe Joe would choose to hit three obese female Muslims over five Christian disabled veterans, but not if they are undocumented immigrants.  And Mary would swerve into a Prius if the three passengers aren’t wearing seatbelts and two are texting over the SUV with five teenagers with a blood alcohol level of 0.07 but attending an Ivy League college.  But now who gets sued, you or the car maker?

But if you think that this is all ridiculous and that the car shouldn’t be making these decisions at all, you are still choosing.  If the car doesn’t swerve, then you have chosen to hit the group of five.  If the car does swerve than you have chosen to hit the one.  It’s still a choice. 

Satisfying the Jones

How do you decide whether to indulge in a high end/high price version of a product or service or whether to be responsible and stick to the low end/low price version?  Some people are very responsible and always take the low end.  This can work if you don’t know what you are missing by never experiencing the high end.  Some people always take the high end.  But I suspect that they end up on the government dole in retirement because they haven’t saved.  Remember the ant and the caterpillar fable.

The problem with the 95% of us who go back and forth is that you never know in advance which one is best for that situation.  You might settle for the low end and be satisfied.  Then you feel really good about the choice.  You also might feel slightly unsatisfied, but reconcile the choice because you were responsible.  That feeling can make up for the difference.  But what about those times you are totally unsatisfied?  Do you then go for the indulgence anyway?  If you do, do you feel guilty about it or forget about your previous mistake and just move on?

I had a small version of this yesterday.  I was choosing among the beers in my fridge.  I am moving, so I need to finish them all before I go.  I decided to go with the low end.  It was not satisfying.  But rather than have a second beer, I decided to go with the indulgent choice on the cheese I had later.  Extra sharp cheddar and extra aged parmigiano reggiano.  Made up for the beer.  But tonight I am having the IPA for sure.  So should I go for the American slices?