By now, everyone who reads this blog probably heard of the “Marshmallow Temptation Test”. The test is designed to check a kid’s ability to resist eating one marshmallow right away if told that he/she could have two in a little while. There is a strong correlation between those who can wait and avoid the temptation of eating the single marshmallow, and the those who grow up to be more successful (than the kids who give into temptation and eat the one marshmallow). The basic setup is simple. Place a kid in a room with a single marshmallow on the plate and tell the kids that in just a little while, the researcher will be back with the second marshmallow which the kids can have ONLY if the first one is still on the plate! Enjoy the video! Note: this is about attention controls; about developing coping strategies early on to postpone rewards; about controlling for impulsive behavior.
Group Decision Errors, Pipsqueak Articles, Product Design Strategy, Scaffolding
Entropy & Design
by Olga Werby •
Entropy is the measure of a system’s disorder and it increases with time (as dictated by the Second Law of Thermodynamics). Once the egg is cracked open, it’s impossible to make whole again: “Humpy Dumpy sat on the wall, Humpy Dumpy had a great fall; all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpy Dumpy together again!” We are taught the second law of thermodynamics from a very early age! So what about design? Surly, we steadily progress to a better and finer product, right? Unfortunately, in my experience, the steady progress is rarely the case when dealing with big company, large products, or long time frames. Big, large, and long spell out entropy in design. Let me walk you through it. We Need A New Product! It all starts with a call: “MegaCorp needs a new product!” Well, the words are sometimes different, but it is all the same—there’s change in the air. With luck, this means that various departments of the MegaCorp Inc. scramble to do some market and internal research to come up with some ideas: What does the market need? What resources do we have? What can we develop? (given time, people, budget,…
Pipsqueak Articles, Users
Washing Machines and Education
by Olga Werby •
Hans Rosling is a professor of International Health at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. (He has been featured on this blog before—“No More Boring Data”.) For me, the most important point Dr. Roseling makes in this TED presentation is that time-saving technology raises the general level of education in the community and women in particular.
Pipsqueak Articles, Product Design Strategy
Marketing Done Well
by Olga Werby •
The video above shows the importance of a good story in promoting one’s product. A good story shapes the behavior of its audience—in this case, it sells beer!
Background Knowledge Errors, Errors, Ethnographic & User Data, Pipsqueak Articles, Product Design Strategy, Users
Knowledge, Context, and Expectation Part II
by Olga Werby •
I first came across this image years ago in our pediatrician’s office. It made everyone who saw it laugh. The young boy—less than a year old, probably—has very limited world experience. But somethings he knows well—food comes out of those! The boy recognized the imagery, but with his limited background knowledge of art and contextual experience, his expectations of milk were quickly dashed (to the complete amusement of his mother). While we enjoy the boy’s predicament, it is good to keep in mind that the products we create can put our users at a disadvantage. The product’s audience can similarly have limited background knowledge, misinterpret the context, and be left with unexpected consequences. And a loving mother might not be there to console them…
Background Knowledge, Background Knowledge Errors, Cultural Bias, Cultural Differences, Pipsqueak Articles
Cultural Difference: Kids Stories
by Olga Werby •
I came across this short video: “The White Wolf” by Pierre-Luc Granjon. It is an 8 minute animation short about two brothers living in a small French village. Please pay attention to the story-line (I know it is an obvious thing to pay attention to): would it have been received well in US? Note that it is not more gruesome than “Snow White”… This is why cultural context is so important to product design and why I teach the class!
Background Knowledge Errors, Cultural Bias, Group Decision Errors, Mental Model Traps, Misapplication of Problem Solving Strategies, Pipsqueak Articles, Product Design Strategy, Scaffolding
Knowledge, Context, & Expectation
by Olga Werby •
These are three necessary components of any product design: Knowledge: the background information that forms the foundation of product design Context: the ecosystem in which the product will be used Expectation: the alignment of goals between product creators and the users for which it was designed A failure to fully understand any of the above variables results in errors that propagate throughout the product system. But what if the product is disaster preparedness? Consider the design of an evacuation plan ahead of a disaster. You would need to understand the what kinds of damage the disaster is capable of wrecking; the probabilities for each outcome; the people and the ecosystem in which the disaster will occur; and expectations of all the participants in the evacuation plans. Tsunami and The Zoo A few years ago, I was teaching a fifth grade science class where we were discussing the possible damage from a tsunami in San Francisco (we just visited the Bay Model). The problem I posed to the students was to design a reasonable evacuation plan for The San Francisco Zoo animals. The Zoo lies on the tsunami flood plane, and as far as we knew there was no plan for…