Have you ever forgotten to take your keys when you left the house? Or your wallet? Or your phone?
Let me guess why. I bet it was because they weren't in the place where you normally leave them. Right?
Because you didn't see them, you didn't think to take them. "Out of sight, out of mind," as they say.
So some people get in the habit of always putting these things in a place where they will see them, preferably as they walk out the door. Then they are in your sight, and thus, in your mind.
Software user interface designers call this principle Recognition Rather Than Recall. The basic idea is: don't make users have to remember to do (or how to do) something. Rather, provide them some cue that they will recognize to help them along.
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/
For example, today basically all computer programs have a menu bar or toolbar somewhere. They are a constant reminder to the user that, "hey, you can save this!" or, "hey, you can make this text bold!" or, "I hope you don't want to close me, but you can click this red X here if you really want to." Yes, the user can recognize the button and know both that the operation exists and how to do it.
Compare that with, say, WordPerfect back in the old days. (And by 'old days', I mean the early 90s.) Way back then, WordPerfect was the premier word processing application. But it didn't have the fancy-shmancy toolbars of today. The user had to remember that the F5 key was save and F12 was quit. Actually, those are probably not the correct keys... but that just further illustrates how hard it is for the user to remember.
With the rise of touchscreen interfaces, I worry that we will backtrack here. A trendy feature of such interfaces is gesture-based commands. The problem is, if the user sees no visual cues that a command is available, he has to... ugh... remember the commands. How exhausting!
I faced a really glaring example of this just this week. I logged into a server running Windows Server 2012. I needed to find a particular program. But the normal Windows entry point to find programs, the Start button, was nowhere to be found. There were a few icons for some applications, all of which were useless to me at the time. I just needed to open this specific app.
Now, I'm a software engineer. I have been using Windows for almost 20 years. And here I was, unable to figure out how to open the application I wanted. The visual cues I am accustomed to had vanished. I had to do a Google search to find it. A Google search! It turns out, you have to move the mouse to the lower right of the screen and that opens the "Charms Bar." Then you can access the Start screen from there. But how is anyone supposed to know that?
But even when I got to the Start screen, I couldn't see all my programs. Again, there was no button or visual cue about how to access them. Again I had to consult of the wisdom of the Internet. It turns out that on the Start screen, you have to right click and then you can access your apps. Again, how is the user supposed to figure that out?
My point is, there is now nothing to recognize. No button. No visual cue of any kind. It all relies on recall. It's even worse when you've never done it before... as in my case with Windows Server 2012. How can you recall what you never knew in the first place?
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
Monday, July 8, 2013
Excellence Answers to No One
I admit: I am mediocre. But I like to think about excellence and individuals who have reached some level of excellence. There are, of course, many ways to approach this, but one thing that keeps running through my head is: excellence cannot exist under the direction of mediocrity.
This may seem obvious. Maybe it is. In any case, here's why I'm thinking it:
Let's say you own a company and you want to build a new headquarters. Now, presumably, you have some idea how you would like the building to look, but you're no architect. So you hire an architect. He, presumably, has some experience designing buildings. The question is: who designs the building? You or the architect?
Really, that depends on how you perceive your abilities vs his. If you perceive yourself as having an excellent eye for building design, you will give instructions to the architect and he will basically follow them. After all, you're paying him. However, if you perceive yourself as mediocre (or worse) in this regard, you will defer to his experience because you perceive him as excellent, at least in comparison to yourself.
Now, which is the better course? I think it's safe to say the latter. After all, he is the architect. Sure, you give him some themes you'd like to see. But then you let him work his excellence. The building gets built, and it is admired by all passers-by.
Of course, this latter approach depends on two very critical things: the architect should actually be excellent, and you should recognize your mediocrity in this respect.
Granted, this is a contrived example. But, I daresay, this principle affects the rise of companies today. There are at least two models of product design that I can think of: designing products based on input from users (or stakeholders, financiers, etc) and designing products based on what you think is cool.
If you have mediocre product designers, definitely go with the former. But if you have excellent product designers, you better go with the latter.
Most companies and/or products fall into the first bucket. They need to build their product to satisfy their customers, so they do whatever they can to meet the customers' needs. By definition, most of anything is mediocre. So for the general case, this is a good model to follow.
But the companies that fall into the second bucket are the game-changing companies. Google, Apple, Tesla. Did Google do market research when they decided to build Loon? Self-driving cars? Gmail? No! They made those products because they thought they were cool. Likewise with the iPod, iPhone, and the Model S. People who are excellent in their field built something they thought was cool. More often than not, other people then also thought those things were cool.
If Apple had built the iPod based on feedback about music players of the day, it would simply have been a CD-player with some more bells and whistles. People mediocre in the field wouldn't have had the creativity or technical background to envision something game-changing. But the excellent people did!
Now, what would have happened if their boss (or stakeholder, or financier) didn't recognize the genius of their vision - if they were mediocre? They may have squashed the project. The best case scenario would have been the forgoing of huge profits. The worse case would have been those excellent people quitting, starting their own competing company, and putting Apple out of business.
So I guess what I'm saying is that if you want your company to do something ground-breaking, hire excellent people and then get out of their way.
And now, the giant caveat. What happens when mediocre people think that they are excellent? That's clearly the worst of both worlds. They would refuse to listen to input from those who know more even though they don't have the skills to justify such hubris. Those are the people you fire.
The last question, then, is: how does one recognize excellence, especially if he is mediocre himself? That's a tough one. I may not be able to recognize excellence, but I can recognize if someone is better than me. Those are the people who I hire. And I tell them to hire people better than them. After enough such iterations, hopefully we can hit that bar.
This may seem obvious. Maybe it is. In any case, here's why I'm thinking it:
Let's say you own a company and you want to build a new headquarters. Now, presumably, you have some idea how you would like the building to look, but you're no architect. So you hire an architect. He, presumably, has some experience designing buildings. The question is: who designs the building? You or the architect?
Really, that depends on how you perceive your abilities vs his. If you perceive yourself as having an excellent eye for building design, you will give instructions to the architect and he will basically follow them. After all, you're paying him. However, if you perceive yourself as mediocre (or worse) in this regard, you will defer to his experience because you perceive him as excellent, at least in comparison to yourself.
Now, which is the better course? I think it's safe to say the latter. After all, he is the architect. Sure, you give him some themes you'd like to see. But then you let him work his excellence. The building gets built, and it is admired by all passers-by.
Of course, this latter approach depends on two very critical things: the architect should actually be excellent, and you should recognize your mediocrity in this respect.
Granted, this is a contrived example. But, I daresay, this principle affects the rise of companies today. There are at least two models of product design that I can think of: designing products based on input from users (or stakeholders, financiers, etc) and designing products based on what you think is cool.
If you have mediocre product designers, definitely go with the former. But if you have excellent product designers, you better go with the latter.
Most companies and/or products fall into the first bucket. They need to build their product to satisfy their customers, so they do whatever they can to meet the customers' needs. By definition, most of anything is mediocre. So for the general case, this is a good model to follow.
But the companies that fall into the second bucket are the game-changing companies. Google, Apple, Tesla. Did Google do market research when they decided to build Loon? Self-driving cars? Gmail? No! They made those products because they thought they were cool. Likewise with the iPod, iPhone, and the Model S. People who are excellent in their field built something they thought was cool. More often than not, other people then also thought those things were cool.
If Apple had built the iPod based on feedback about music players of the day, it would simply have been a CD-player with some more bells and whistles. People mediocre in the field wouldn't have had the creativity or technical background to envision something game-changing. But the excellent people did!
Now, what would have happened if their boss (or stakeholder, or financier) didn't recognize the genius of their vision - if they were mediocre? They may have squashed the project. The best case scenario would have been the forgoing of huge profits. The worse case would have been those excellent people quitting, starting their own competing company, and putting Apple out of business.
So I guess what I'm saying is that if you want your company to do something ground-breaking, hire excellent people and then get out of their way.
And now, the giant caveat. What happens when mediocre people think that they are excellent? That's clearly the worst of both worlds. They would refuse to listen to input from those who know more even though they don't have the skills to justify such hubris. Those are the people you fire.
The last question, then, is: how does one recognize excellence, especially if he is mediocre himself? That's a tough one. I may not be able to recognize excellence, but I can recognize if someone is better than me. Those are the people who I hire. And I tell them to hire people better than them. After enough such iterations, hopefully we can hit that bar.
Friday, June 7, 2013
Your Mind Makes It Real
The Placebo Effect. The Nocebo Effect. Priming. Um... The Matrix.
Your mind has an uncanny ability to make perceived things real. I used to think this was incredibly impressive. But I didn't know the half of it.
Check out this experiment:
http://pds15.egloos.com/pds/200910/18/78/Gaining_strength.pdf
If you're like me and are too lazy to read it, here's the gist:
Some researchers in Cleveland wanted to determine if mental practice of an exercise could actually result in physical changes to the targeted areas of the body. One group of subjects did a regular exercise involving moving their finger sideways. A second group regularly imagined doing the same exercise but did not actually go through the physical motions. The control group did nothing.
After 12 weeks, the 'actual physical exercise' group showed a finger strength increase of 53%. The control group did not show any strength increase. Now, the fun part: the 'mental exercise' group showed a strength increase of 35%!
That's right: the group that didn't perform any physical exercise increased their physical strength by imagining they were exercising. "They didn't have to lift a finger in order to convince their brains that they were, in fact, lifting a finger."
When I first read this, I thought it must have been some mistake. But the same results were obtained by a separate experiment done in Canada in 2007:
http://westallen.typepad.com/brains_on_purpose/files/mind_over_matter_shackell_07.pdf
In this case, the experiment involved hip muscles. They used the same 3 types of groups. The 'actual physical exercise' group increased their strength by 28%. The control group, none. The 'mental exercise' group... wait for it... 24%!
I don't know about you, but I am blown away by this. And I'm sure I will continue to be blown away as we uncover more amazing things our minds can do.
Your mind has an uncanny ability to make perceived things real. I used to think this was incredibly impressive. But I didn't know the half of it.
Check out this experiment:
http://pds15.egloos.com/pds/200910/18/78/Gaining_strength.pdf
If you're like me and are too lazy to read it, here's the gist:
Some researchers in Cleveland wanted to determine if mental practice of an exercise could actually result in physical changes to the targeted areas of the body. One group of subjects did a regular exercise involving moving their finger sideways. A second group regularly imagined doing the same exercise but did not actually go through the physical motions. The control group did nothing.
After 12 weeks, the 'actual physical exercise' group showed a finger strength increase of 53%. The control group did not show any strength increase. Now, the fun part: the 'mental exercise' group showed a strength increase of 35%!
That's right: the group that didn't perform any physical exercise increased their physical strength by imagining they were exercising. "They didn't have to lift a finger in order to convince their brains that they were, in fact, lifting a finger."
When I first read this, I thought it must have been some mistake. But the same results were obtained by a separate experiment done in Canada in 2007:
http://westallen.typepad.com/brains_on_purpose/files/mind_over_matter_shackell_07.pdf
In this case, the experiment involved hip muscles. They used the same 3 types of groups. The 'actual physical exercise' group increased their strength by 28%. The control group, none. The 'mental exercise' group... wait for it... 24%!
I don't know about you, but I am blown away by this. And I'm sure I will continue to be blown away as we uncover more amazing things our minds can do.
Friday, April 5, 2013
Prototypical Remembrance
Your life is not as you remember it. Neither is mine.
It's bold claim to make, I agree. So let me elaborate:
Think about your next vacation. How much money are you willing to spend on it? Now, how much would you be willing to spend if, at the end of the vacation, all pictures were deleted, all souvenirs taken, and even all memories erased? In other words, how much would you spend if you knew that you would not remember anything about the vacation?
Think about it.
I'd wager you would spend a lot less money in the no-memory case... maybe nothing at all!
But why? If we still get to enjoy the vacation, why should it make a difference if we remember it? Therein lies the rub!
Experiments have shown that we essentially have two selves: the experiencing self and the remembering self. The former lives in the moment and the latter looks back and evaluates. But the most interesting part is that the two usually disagree!
But how could they disagree? I mean, we are the same person in both instances. The trick lies in how we remember.
It turns out we don't store every moment in our memory. Instead, we store prototypes of events. For example, think about your commute to work. You likely don't remember every moment of every days' commute. What you do remember is a prototypical, average commute. If something was different today ("oh look, a Starbucks is opening") it stands out because it is different from the prototype. So now your mind stores the prototype and the new exceptional case. So the memory of all of our commutes is essentially a file of a prototype plus exceptional cases.
Let's take it a step further. There are many moments in a commute. How does our mind determine what should make up the prototype? If it picks the wrong moments to represent the entire event, we will have a discrepancy between the experiencing self and the remembering self. As it turns out, this is exactly what happens.
One great experiment involved asking subjects to put their hands in bowls of cold water. At frequent intervals, the conductor of the experiment would ask them to rate the discomfort they felt in their hands (the 'experienced' rating). At the end, after they removed their hands, they were asked to rate how negative the overall experience was (the 'remembered' rating). I ruined the surprise already, but: the two types of ratings almost always disagreed!
If you look at the results of this experiment, you will find that the 'remembered' rating is about equal to the average of the peak 'experienced' rating and the last 'experienced' rating. All other 'experienced' ratings are ignored. Interestingly, the total time of the negative event is also ignored.
From a purely mathematical standpoint, one would expect that the overall 'remembered' rating should be the integral (the area under the curve) of all of the 'experienced' ratings. But our remembering self uses the above peak-end calculation instead.
So, the way we remember our lives is not the way we have actually experienced them.
For a much more detail explanation, please do read Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.
http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374275637
It's bold claim to make, I agree. So let me elaborate:
Think about your next vacation. How much money are you willing to spend on it? Now, how much would you be willing to spend if, at the end of the vacation, all pictures were deleted, all souvenirs taken, and even all memories erased? In other words, how much would you spend if you knew that you would not remember anything about the vacation?
Think about it.
I'd wager you would spend a lot less money in the no-memory case... maybe nothing at all!
But why? If we still get to enjoy the vacation, why should it make a difference if we remember it? Therein lies the rub!
Experiments have shown that we essentially have two selves: the experiencing self and the remembering self. The former lives in the moment and the latter looks back and evaluates. But the most interesting part is that the two usually disagree!
But how could they disagree? I mean, we are the same person in both instances. The trick lies in how we remember.
It turns out we don't store every moment in our memory. Instead, we store prototypes of events. For example, think about your commute to work. You likely don't remember every moment of every days' commute. What you do remember is a prototypical, average commute. If something was different today ("oh look, a Starbucks is opening") it stands out because it is different from the prototype. So now your mind stores the prototype and the new exceptional case. So the memory of all of our commutes is essentially a file of a prototype plus exceptional cases.
Let's take it a step further. There are many moments in a commute. How does our mind determine what should make up the prototype? If it picks the wrong moments to represent the entire event, we will have a discrepancy between the experiencing self and the remembering self. As it turns out, this is exactly what happens.
One great experiment involved asking subjects to put their hands in bowls of cold water. At frequent intervals, the conductor of the experiment would ask them to rate the discomfort they felt in their hands (the 'experienced' rating). At the end, after they removed their hands, they were asked to rate how negative the overall experience was (the 'remembered' rating). I ruined the surprise already, but: the two types of ratings almost always disagreed!
If you look at the results of this experiment, you will find that the 'remembered' rating is about equal to the average of the peak 'experienced' rating and the last 'experienced' rating. All other 'experienced' ratings are ignored. Interestingly, the total time of the negative event is also ignored.
From a purely mathematical standpoint, one would expect that the overall 'remembered' rating should be the integral (the area under the curve) of all of the 'experienced' ratings. But our remembering self uses the above peak-end calculation instead.
So, the way we remember our lives is not the way we have actually experienced them.
For a much more detail explanation, please do read Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.
http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374275637
Monday, March 4, 2013
Another Step Foward for the Knowledge Stream
Several months ago I posted about what I call the Knowledge Stream: essentially, a network of neural implants that we could use to share the world's knowledge in real-time just by thinking about it.
Well, Brown University has made some great progress with devices implanted into the motor cortex:
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/149879-brown-university-creates-first-wireless-implanted-brain-computer-interface
Granted, it's still a far cry from sharing information, but the pieces are coming together...
Well, Brown University has made some great progress with devices implanted into the motor cortex:
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/149879-brown-university-creates-first-wireless-implanted-brain-computer-interface
Granted, it's still a far cry from sharing information, but the pieces are coming together...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)