Google Apps New Pay Policy and Behavioral Economics

Google Apps Icons

Yesterday, Google flipped a switched on its Google Apps policy — starting with December 7th, 2012, Google Apps will no longer be free! The change is for Google Apps for Business and it effectively ends the ability to create free accounts for groups of 10 or fewer users (here’s Google’s announcement). Individuals could still have a personal account, but businesses will have to pay $50 per user, per year… That is NEW business customers will have to pay — if you had a business account prior to the announcement, you get to keep it on the same terms you’ve signed up for — free! But all new Google Apps business customers from this point forward will pay to play. There’s a lot of chatter about whether Google’s customers will pay or walk away, but I’m interested in the behavioral economics analysis of this change. Allow me describe a few experiments on anchoring — the psychological phenomena where individuals get attached to the first result they witness and base their subsequent decisions on that original priming. The experiments I’m going to describe come from two books: Dan Ariely’s “Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions”…

Same Desire, Cultural Shift in Solution

Give cigarettes for christmas

Over time, some desires have stayed constant: an aversion to pain, a wish for health, a longing to be loved, and a craving for wealth, power, and youth. But desires are susceptible to cultural shifts, and so they shift with the whim of fashion: the need to be thin, the hope to fit the norms of current beauty, the yearning for popularity, an aspiration for fame. Each generation comes up with solutions for their desired that are based in the cultural soup that nourished them. What is a cultural soup? Well, it’s a heady mixture of the following: anxiety — each generation has their own issues that they loose sleep over. In addition to the ones that their parents experienced, each generation can choose and pick and invent their own worries. affordances — affordances are available actions that are mired in context and situation. As context changes, affordances evolve. Each generation sees a unique subset of problem solutions. emotional design — each generation is stirred by issues and fashion that are uniquely their own. Emotional design is by definition tied to a particular group of people, be they joined in time, cause, or geography. Social value, user satisfaction, and emotional…

Innovating Justice for the New Millennium

2012-11-16 Rachel Moran, Sanela Diana Jenkins, and Richard Steinberg with Innovating Justice Award

This month, The Hague Institute for the Internationalisation of Law (HiiL) announced the finalists for its Innovating Justice Awards. The top three justice innovations for 2012 were The Human Rights & International Criminal Law Online Forum, a partnership between International Criminal Court Office of the Prosecutor (ICC OTP) and UCLA School of Law; The National Justice in Your Community programme of Peru, a project that supports volunteer efforts of judges in their local communities to share their legal knowledge and experience; and Peace Tones, a project that works to protect the rights of world musicians through technology and education. “Innovation is one of the important growth variables. We also see the rule of law as one of the most important factors in the welfare and well-being of the society,” stated Dr. Anne van Aaken, Innovating Justice jury chair and Max Schmidheiny Foundation Professor for Law and Economics, Public, International and European Law. “Justice innovations have the potential to contribute immensely to human welfare, just like technical innovation do.” Thinking broadly, there are three categories of justice innovations. One focuses on providing education and access to the existing laws to the undeserved communities. There’s lots of misinformation out there. And those…

In Search of Design Excellence

Rutter, G. B. (2010). “In Search of Design Excellence.” http://www.appliancedesign.com. Visited on October 15th, 2012: http://www.appliancedesign.com/Articles/Feature_Article/BNP_GUID_9-5-2006_A_10000000000000931808 Design excellence can be defined as a combination of design excellence, or the fidelity of decisions decisions and the innovations. Often, people conflate innovation and  the execution of design. Even if a design is new and a breakthrough, the execution of the design can make or break the how excellent a design truly is. One area to consider for design execution is human centered design. Examples given include the design of a music application. While it might be possible to dpwnload music in a new manner, it does not mean ease of use has been considered. Similary, when considering design decisions for making a new chair, often times, ergonomics and engineering check boxes may be used to create new experiences. However, if human centered design tenants are not considered, the design may still ultimately fail. Ie, s the music app easy to use? Fun to use? Is the chair comfortable? Does it fit in the users environment? For new innovations if human centered designed is a component of the design a better product may emerge, and this is one sign of excellent design. p-prim…

Article: Sometimes more choices leave people worse off

Research published in Biology Letters shows that people confronted with too many choices have difficulty making a good decision. The study analyses over 3,700 human dating descisons across 84 speed-dating events. The study found that when the numnber of variable attributes increases (ie heigh, occupation, education background), people made fewer dating proposals. The effect was even stronger as the number of potential partners increased. Another study shows that when participants in a dating study are given more potential partners, their emotional satisfaction is not higher than when presented with fewer options. Other studies have shows that more options cripple a people to not make any decision at all. Consumer studies show that when given limited options, consumers make a purchasing decison, and are happier with the limited set of options. When given large numbers of options, humans and other animals tend to rely on heuristics that help guide decision making. These rules of thumb help to reduce and simplify the decision making proceess by ignoring some information. We tend to default to quick, easy, and recognizable options. We can decide the appeal of a face in 13 milliseconds. So with fewer options, people make quicker decisions. With more options, people…