Just read this on boxesandarrows.com:
"If you’ve ever seen the Grand Canyon and tried to explain it to friends back home, you know what I mean. You’d never succeed with a few slides and bullet points. You’d have to sit down with them and—relying on voice, gesture and facial expression—somehow convey the canyon’s unreal scale and beauty. You’d have to essentially act out what the experience felt like to you."
This is what we mean by storytelling... this is the essence of it right here.
Personas and the Role of Design Documentation
How it’s less about deliverables, and more about design.
by Andrew Hinton on 2008/02/26 | [23 Comments]
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Naming & symbolic thought
Just capturing some thoughts for later pondering.
Common question is whether thought exists outside of language -- I am certain that it does, as I myself don't think in words, instead I must "name" my thoughts and convert them into the words I use to express them, as I'm doing right now. But is that how everyone thinks? I have no way of knowing.
In visual arts, I clearly recall making the transition from seeing and naming to just seeing, without naming. I can't do that with written words - if I see a word, in English anyway, I have to read it - I can't see the letters without hearing the word. Can some people do that?
It would be an interesting dissertation topic to investigate this further.
Another question - music. Is music symbolic? It doesn't seem to be, I don't find myself naming when I listen. Although as I advance in my study of the guitar, my ability to name does increase -- now I can name intervals, keys, etc.
Common question is whether thought exists outside of language -- I am certain that it does, as I myself don't think in words, instead I must "name" my thoughts and convert them into the words I use to express them, as I'm doing right now. But is that how everyone thinks? I have no way of knowing.
In visual arts, I clearly recall making the transition from seeing and naming to just seeing, without naming. I can't do that with written words - if I see a word, in English anyway, I have to read it - I can't see the letters without hearing the word. Can some people do that?
It would be an interesting dissertation topic to investigate this further.
Another question - music. Is music symbolic? It doesn't seem to be, I don't find myself naming when I listen. Although as I advance in my study of the guitar, my ability to name does increase -- now I can name intervals, keys, etc.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Cognitive Dissonance & Monty Hall
There have been some interesting articles in the Times over the last couple days that, on reflection, might have some relevance to what we do.
First, a classic study (from 1956) about cognitive dissonance (and consumer choice) has been overturned. In the study, monkeys were allowed to choose a red or blue M&M. Say it chooses red. Next, it’s given the chance to choose between blue and green – will it choose randomly? No, study after study shows the monkey is more likely to choose green. Why? The classic explanation is that it’s rationalized its previous rejection of blue by telling itself it doesn’t really like blue in the first place (it’s retroactively justifying its previous choice to avoid cognitive dissonance).
Implication – that if we arrange for consumers to make one random choice, that this will impact their future choices, that is, if we want our customers to pick that green M&M we can make it more likely by first offering them the choice of the red or blue, and then offering them the green along with whichever one they rejected before.
Not so fast, though – turns out the whole experiment is based on a statistical flaw, called the Monty Hall problem, from Let’s Make a Deal. Try this problem on for size:
You’re on Let’s Make a Deal. Monty Hall shows you three doors, and tells you there’s a car behind one door, and goats behind the other two. Pick the door with the car and you win. Say you choose door #1. Monty then opens one of the other two doors to reveal a goat, and asks you if you want to switch. Should you? (note: in real life Monty can manipulate the result, for the sake of this problem assume that he must always open exactly one door that’s hiding a goat)
This is a HUGELY contentious issue, when the columnist and self-described genius Marilyn Vos Savant published the correct answer in Parade magazine in 1991 she got a torrent of letters from professors, mathematicians, etc., telling her she was nuts, but she was right. John Tierney of the Times actually met with Monty Hall himself and proved it.
The answer is that you should switch.
Why? Wouldn’t the odds be 1 chance in 2 that either door is right? Nope. Think of it like this: imagine you chose Door #1, and Monty offered you BOTH doors #2 & #3. You’d take it, right? The odds are 2 in 3 that one of those two doors is the winner. Well, that’s exactly what’s happening – Monty’s offering you BOTH door #2 and door #3 (odds are 2 in 3 that one is the winner) and then simply revealing that one of the two is a goat, which we already knew (one of the 2 has to be a goat, there’s only 1 car). So the odds that door #2 hides the car is still 2 chances in 3, and the odds it’s behind #1 is still 1 chance in 3. Switch! Don’t believe me? The Times has as simulation where you can play for yourself.
Implications for us? Humans have a really hard time with probability. The way we arrange the available choices can strongly influence which selection people make. If we’re relying on them understanding the odds, then we need to be careful, and of course if we’re Monty Hall, then we’re controlling the game by taking advantage of difficult it is for people to process this sort of problem.
Further reading: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/science/08tier.html
ps – what’s that got to do with the monkeys? Tierney explains it on the above page, but basically the researchers were making the Monty Hall mistake and therefore misinterpreting their findings
First, a classic study (from 1956) about cognitive dissonance (and consumer choice) has been overturned. In the study, monkeys were allowed to choose a red or blue M&M. Say it chooses red. Next, it’s given the chance to choose between blue and green – will it choose randomly? No, study after study shows the monkey is more likely to choose green. Why? The classic explanation is that it’s rationalized its previous rejection of blue by telling itself it doesn’t really like blue in the first place (it’s retroactively justifying its previous choice to avoid cognitive dissonance).
Implication – that if we arrange for consumers to make one random choice, that this will impact their future choices, that is, if we want our customers to pick that green M&M we can make it more likely by first offering them the choice of the red or blue, and then offering them the green along with whichever one they rejected before.
Not so fast, though – turns out the whole experiment is based on a statistical flaw, called the Monty Hall problem, from Let’s Make a Deal. Try this problem on for size:
You’re on Let’s Make a Deal. Monty Hall shows you three doors, and tells you there’s a car behind one door, and goats behind the other two. Pick the door with the car and you win. Say you choose door #1. Monty then opens one of the other two doors to reveal a goat, and asks you if you want to switch. Should you? (note: in real life Monty can manipulate the result, for the sake of this problem assume that he must always open exactly one door that’s hiding a goat)
This is a HUGELY contentious issue, when the columnist and self-described genius Marilyn Vos Savant published the correct answer in Parade magazine in 1991 she got a torrent of letters from professors, mathematicians, etc., telling her she was nuts, but she was right. John Tierney of the Times actually met with Monty Hall himself and proved it.
The answer is that you should switch.
Why? Wouldn’t the odds be 1 chance in 2 that either door is right? Nope. Think of it like this: imagine you chose Door #1, and Monty offered you BOTH doors #2 & #3. You’d take it, right? The odds are 2 in 3 that one of those two doors is the winner. Well, that’s exactly what’s happening – Monty’s offering you BOTH door #2 and door #3 (odds are 2 in 3 that one is the winner) and then simply revealing that one of the two is a goat, which we already knew (one of the 2 has to be a goat, there’s only 1 car). So the odds that door #2 hides the car is still 2 chances in 3, and the odds it’s behind #1 is still 1 chance in 3. Switch! Don’t believe me? The Times has as simulation where you can play for yourself.
Implications for us? Humans have a really hard time with probability. The way we arrange the available choices can strongly influence which selection people make. If we’re relying on them understanding the odds, then we need to be careful, and of course if we’re Monty Hall, then we’re controlling the game by taking advantage of difficult it is for people to process this sort of problem.
Further reading: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/science/08tier.html
ps – what’s that got to do with the monkeys? Tierney explains it on the above page, but basically the researchers were making the Monty Hall mistake and therefore misinterpreting their findings
Monday, April 7, 2008
Friday, April 4, 2008
A Question of Security
"Account number, please?" the customer service representative asks. I glance down at my latest statement and read if off.
"And with whom am I speaking?" she continues, I tell her my name. Then the big question: "For security purposes, what is the property address?"
What sort of "security" is that, exactly, I wonder, as I glance down at my statement on which my address is printed in friendly 12-point Arial. If I'd stolen this statement out of my neighbor's mailbox, wouldn't I be able to answer all of these questions? Obviously it's no security at all.
Now if she called me on a phone number from my file, then perhaps she could have reasonable confidence as to my identity. Assuming, of course, that I wasn't a guest in the house up to some mischief - which is a big assumption to make from a security perspective. But even so - the phone rings, and someone claiming to be a customer representative is on the line, now I have to wonder who is it really?
An external, third-party identity verification system is what's needed, not only for Web sites and other electronic transactions but for phone calls too. More on this later.
"And with whom am I speaking?" she continues, I tell her my name. Then the big question: "For security purposes, what is the property address?"
What sort of "security" is that, exactly, I wonder, as I glance down at my statement on which my address is printed in friendly 12-point Arial. If I'd stolen this statement out of my neighbor's mailbox, wouldn't I be able to answer all of these questions? Obviously it's no security at all.
Now if she called me on a phone number from my file, then perhaps she could have reasonable confidence as to my identity. Assuming, of course, that I wasn't a guest in the house up to some mischief - which is a big assumption to make from a security perspective. But even so - the phone rings, and someone claiming to be a customer representative is on the line, now I have to wonder who is it really?
An external, third-party identity verification system is what's needed, not only for Web sites and other electronic transactions but for phone calls too. More on this later.
Link Overload
Interesting post from Jack Shafer in Slate today, Links that Stink, "Grumbling about the misuse of hyperlinks on news sites." He writes:
A key point he makes is that by training us that most links are useless, we are therefore unlikely to click on a link even when it might have been useful.
When Vannevar Bush first dreamt of hyperlinks back in the 1940s, surely he envisioned something tidier than the link riots that erupt on many of today's Web pages. The extraneous links etched into most Washingtonpost.com stories, for example, make it look as though an insect rode a unicycle dipped in blue ink through the copy before you got there.
A key point he makes is that by training us that most links are useless, we are therefore unlikely to click on a link even when it might have been useful.
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