Background Knowledge Errors

Background Knowledge, Background Knowledge Errors, Conceptual Design, Cultural Bias, Cultural Differences, Pipsqueak Articles, Product Design Strategy

Cultural and Subject Matter Knowledge

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What is that?! Is that what I think it is? These toys were part of a window display in a little store in the center of Rome. I don’t believe a lot of kids play with Nazi toy soldiers…in Italy, today. But if WWII turned out differently, these might have been the coveted toys, not just for a limited set of adult collectors, but for average, everyday kids…who happened to be living in an alternate reality. So this brings me to the main point of this post: products have to have cultural relevance, and this requires designers to have a good grasp on social background knowledge and on the subject matter within which they are working. Consider this little street sign in Rome as another example of cultural and subject matter relevancy: If you click on the image, you can get a larger version—yes, it is a crucifix with Jesus icon. Here in San Francisco, this sign wouldn’t work. But in Rome, it makes perfect sense. It’s culturally relevant and conveys information to the local population. Both of these examples show that it’s not just cultural knowledge that’s important. Without knowing the meaning of a crucifix or being able to…

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Background Knowledge, Background Knowledge Errors, Causal Net Problems, Cognitive Blindness, Conceptual Design, Cultural Bias, Cultural Differences, Ethnographic & User Data, Featured, Group Decision Errors, Mental Model Traps, Mirroring Errors, Pipsqueak Articles, Product Design Strategy

Community of Practice and Knowledge Propagation Circle

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This summer my family and I travelled to Rome. While the temperatures didn’t reach the usual astronomic heights, it was rather warm. But we, and other visitors, didn’t have to worry about thirst. Rome has the best network of public drinking fountains that I have ever seen. Every few blocks, there’s a beautifully-designed basin with a spigot of continuously running water (I know, being from California, the never-ending stream made us very uncomfortable, too). There are two bits of information that have to be passed on to the first-time visitors of Rome: the water is potable—safe to drink, and how to use the fountain—there’s a bit of a trick to them. Above is my son demonstrating a little secret interaction. There’s a small hole on the top of the pipe that can serve as drinking fountain if the main hole at the end is plugged up (with a finger). While we learned about the great drinking water in Rome from many traveling guides (books, online sites, etc.), we obviously didn’t know about the trick until we watched a pro do it. Knowledge Propagation Circle Information propagates through communities. When we first encounter a novel bit of data, it tends to…

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Attention Controls Errors, Background Knowledge Errors, Long Term Memory, Mental Model Traps, Metaphor Mistakes, Perceptual Blindness, Pipsqueak Articles, Working Memory

p-Prims about Memory

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Memory can be tricky—somethings seem to come to mind without bidding, while others are stubbornly evading our efforts at recalling them. We have many explanations for how and why somethings are easy to remember and others take so much effort; or why some people are very good at mnemonic feats and others not so much. Many of these mental models of how memory works are faulty (or simply not true) and are based on folksy wisdom passed from one generation to the next. Some of these wisdoms involve tricks for remembering things. For example, my Russian grandmother suggested tying corners of handkerchief to aide memory—if you notice a knot on the corner, you know that there’s something you supposed to remember. Since I don’t carry a handkerchief, I use my rings for the same effect—move a ring from finger to another (where it typically doesn’t belong) and then at least I know that should be keeping something in mind. Of course this strategy does nothing to help you remember what it is you are supposed to remember, but that’s another problem. So I thought to put together a little list of memory-related p-prims—a set of beliefs—that are common in our culture. Below,…

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Background Knowledge, Background Knowledge Errors, Causal Net Problems, Cultural Differences, Mental Model Traps, Pipsqueak Articles, Users

p-prims can be dangerous

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Some p-prims are harmless, but some can lead to serious bodily harm. The image above shows villages in Indonesia lying on an electrified railway track. Why? They believe this will improve their health. Their p-prim has to do with medicine: “electricity can cure some diseases.” This is not totally untrue, as is the case with all p-prims. Ultrasound therapy helps heal certain muscle strains, and the ultrasound machine runs on electricity. Heat lamps are also commonly used therapeutically. And they too require electricity. There are many, many other examples. It’s easy to explain how such folksy wisdom gets passed around the community. The problem with this particular p-prim is the resulting decisions that people make based on their beliefs in the curative power of electricity. How would a poor farmer in Rawa Buaya, outside Jakarta, get electricity? The most accessible source is this railway track. A tragedy is only a train away…

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Anchoring Errors, Background Knowledge Errors, Cognitive Blindness, Conceptual Design, Cultural Bias, Cultural Differences, Errors, Ethnographic & User Data, Metaphor Mistakes, Mirroring Errors, Pipsqueak Articles, Product Design Strategy

Lost in Translation: Cultural Differences in Advertising

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“Lost in Translation” was a wonderful movie by Sofia Coppola, starring Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson. It depicted the delicious confusion of Western tourists in total Japanese cultural emersion. In particular, the scenes where Bill Murray shoots a liquor commercial for the Japanese market are simply priceless. In retrospect, I see where Ms. Coppola got her ideas. Her cousin, Nicholas Cage, have been making wonderfully odd (to our sensibilities) commercials for years. He clearly had stories to share. Here are a few of his gems, courtesy the World Wide Web: and But it’s not only Japan that surprises our/my cultural biases. This morning, my husband and I went to a local grocery store in Rome, Italy. In the cheese section, there was a little paper bottle of parmesan cheese with a mouse of the package. The mouse didn’t work for me at all! So much for cultural differences. Here’s a small collection of ads for McDonalds from all over the world. Please compare it to the packaging and menus for this restaurant chain that I’ve posted here in the past: “Cultural World Domination”. Notice all of the anchoring errors, metaphor mistakes, cultural biases, mirroring errors, and general cognitive and cultural…

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Cognitive Blindness, Conceptual Design, Diagnostic Errors, Errors, Featured, Mirroring Errors, Pipsqueak Articles, Product Design Strategy, Scaffolding

Empathy on the Brain

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Empathy is a necessary component of product design. To design and make something that is comfortable to use for someone else, requires the maker of the product to imagine how another human being would feel while using it. This is a hard thing to do. Medical students have to take “bed side manners” classes that explicitly teach empathy for the patient. Some design schools do the same (check out this video in Product Design Resources). Fortunately, humans come equipped with a special region in the brain whose job it is to help us see the world from another’s point of view. Here’s a short introduction by Rebecca Saxe, “How we read each other’s minds.” So when we go to the movies, we relate to the characters and feel what they feel, and cry when they are sad, and laugh when they are happy, and cringe when things get awkward, because we have the Right TPJ (or RTPJ) region in our brain just behind and above our right ear. We aren’t born ready to use this part of our brain, as the experiments described by Dr. Saxe in the video show. It takes a long time for this social problem solving…

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Background Knowledge Errors, Errors, Ethnographic & User Data, Pipsqueak Articles, Product Design Strategy, Users

Knowledge, Context, and Expectation Part II

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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…

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