Studio Journal Episode 9 - Meeting my Neighbors

As you know from my previous post, I didn’t get into my new apartment until really late.  So I waited until Day 2 to introduce myself.  I made some cookies (premade batter, but it’s the thought that counts, right?) and knocked on the seven doors on my floor.  Only three people were home.  One was on the phone, but was happy to take a cookie.  A second was eating dinner, but he appreciated the thought.  The third told me he was moving out the next weekend, but he loved the cookie.  Oh well – so much for meeting people.  A week later and I still haven’t met anyone else.  Maybe I need to try cookies again. Or go up to the second floor.

When the third neighbor moved out, I saw him about to throw away a whole assortment of blankets, pillows, and other bedding. Much of it looked really warm and in perfectly good condition.  So I asked him if I could take it down to the homeless shelter where I volunteer.  He was happy to let me take everything off his hands so this morning I brought it all over.  Since the weather is starting to turn away from summer, the timing is pretty good, although the shelter will take good winter blankets any time. 

This Week in EID Episode 20

I am really excited to recap this week’s EID.  We had some great posts and a few of them became hot topics of discussion on the Linked In groups where I also repost them.

I was going to start with my favorite one, but looking at the posts I can’t decide which one is my favorite.  So I will go with the one that received my favorite questions.  That is the one onintergenerational games.  I got questions from some K-12 teachers asking my advice on how to use my ideas, and these kinds of games in general, in their classes.  This is the kind of thing that motivated me to take on the huge responsibility of managing the site, so it is really great when it actually happens. 

The one that covered my favorite topic is the Stephen Colbert/Slate article on truthiness.  The Slate author retweeted it, so that helped get some wide distribution.  But what I liked about the post itself is that I went against my usual grain, showing (IMHO) that I do have an open mind.  I took an article on self-delusion and showed how it may not be delusional after all. 

The post on instant gratification was a success for several reasons.  The author retweeted it.  It is about another of my favorite topics – instant gratification.  It involved deep thinking.  It references one of my favorite web sites, so I got to give them some publicity and cross traffic. 

Then last, but not least, was the post on Twitter influencers from Social Media Examiner.  Again, it is a great topic (social media influencers), it was against the grain (an insight from a research study that neither the study authors nor I came up with ourselves), it was an article from a great source (Social Media Examiner), and the insight was powerful (not just for me, but in general). 

So I have to say that this might be my proudest set of four posts yet.  Yeah EID !!

Hiding or framing your flaws

I was wondering about an interesting tradeoff that seems to come up a lot in UX design, at least if you are doing it right.  No matter how conscientious we are, there are always going to be some flaws in the design.  They can emerge because we had to make a tradeoff to prioritize one feature over another or it could be that our resources just don’t allow us to perfect everything.  But whatever the cause, we often have to live with flaws in a design.

So here is the tradeoff.  There are two strategies to deal with the flaw when it comes to communicating it to users.  We can explicitly call it to the user’s attention and take this opportunity to frame it in the most positive (or the least negative) way.  This can minimize the perceived severity of the flaw, show the user that we take responsibility for it, and explain why it exists.

On the other hand, we can keep mum, hope they don’t see it, or at least don’t see it in full.  This can minimize the likelihood it is noticed, and if it is noticed perhaps not all of it.

There are some cases where the answer is clear.  If the flaw is so obvious that users can’t miss it, the second strategy won’t work so we may as well go with the first one.  And if the flaw is so obscure that most users will definitely miss it, the second one seems like a reasonable choice.  But I don’t think either of these extremes is very common.  Most design contexts will fall somewhere in the middle and so we have to make a hard decision.

Which way do you usually go?  Why?  I am really interested in hearing some justifications for one strategy over the other.  They both seem to have merit.

"Rewards" and "gifts" that are hardly rewards and gifts.

I am really tired of companies that offer you a “benefit” or a “gift” or some “loyalty reward” that consists of $5 off a $25 purchase or a free dessert with purchase of dinner.  Who in their right minds thinks of this as a “gift” or as “free”?  Given the way business finance works, the cost of getting you in the door and serving you is most of their costs.  In many cases (e.g. companies with a halfway decent margin), they can shower you with these kinds of discounts all day and not lose their profitability.  And when you have to pay a considerable amount to get the freebie, it is not really a gift or a reward.  It is simply BS.  And we know it, don’t we?  If anything, I lose loyalty for companies that do this, because I think of them as hypocrites rather than whatever brand image they are promoting. 

I propose a boycott of all companies that try to manipulate us this way !!!  Who is with me?  Let's  revolt!

Unconscious corrupting influences are just as bad as quid pro quo

I have to admit being one of those people very upset by the Supreme Court rulings on campaign finance over the past years.  The majority opinion has been that without a quid pro quo agreement, money does not create a corrupting influence.  But anyone familiar with behavioral science knows that this could not be further from the truth.  When someone does you a favor, even with no discussion whatsoever of any reciprocation, you develop at least an unconscious if not an overt urge to reciprocate.  And when it is unconscious, the influence can be even more dangerous because you can’t inhibit what you don’t even know about.

So a lobbying group or donor of some kind gives a large sum of money to a political campaign.  They don’t ask for anything in return except for the politician to listen for a few minutes to their case.  The politician will be influenced nonetheless.  Even just being predisposed to be open to the argument can make it more convincing that the other side’s argument that was not accompanied by a donation.

The lobbying group may even say explicitly that they don’t want any favors in return.  This can often lead to an even stronger reciprocation urge.  The more strongly you insist you don’t want a favor in return, the stronger the urge to give you one.  Yes, it happens.  But the Supreme Court doesn’t seem to get this. 

This Week in EID Episode 18/19

Another double episode of “This Week in EID.”  Because of my move, I missed last week.  Too busy packing. 

But I think rather than going post by post this week, I will share some higher level thoughts.

It turns out that ethics is consistently the hottest topic for discussion.  Some of my cross links of the ethics posts, especially the one on OKCupid, launched some serious discussions on Linked In.  Surprisingly, the posts that share some unique and innovative product designs don’t get much response.  You read those posts, and maybe think about them on your own, but don’t reply.  I guess if the designs speak for themselves, I should expect that. 

Another surprise is that some of the posts I expect to be controversial also don’t seem to get comments.  This is actually a nice surprise because from what I hear from other bloggers, controversial topics are more likely to result in flame wars than intelligent debate.  I am really glad that the EID readership doesn’t fall into this category.

Our analytics (huge thanks to Keith for keeping up on these) indicates that we are gaining traction in readership.  Still not a lot of comments, but a lot more page views and shares.  That is a good sign.  Eventually, we should be at the critical mass so that the time I spend every day writing these articles bears fruit.  Oh boy I can’t wait for that.

So enjoy the posts, keep on reading, start commenting when you feel like it, and I will be back next week with the usual episode summaries.