Peter Merholz

Scott Rosenberg’s short video, The First Blogger, is an excellent example of how to engage and audience and build buzz for a book (in this case, his forthcoming Say Everything. It uses a topic that many potential readers would be interested in, and draws those folks into a little mystery.

How We Decide is the latest book of pop cognitive science to attract significant attention. In it, Jonah Lehrer positions his discussion as something of a battle, or, at least, a give-and-take, between the brain’s deep-seated emotional urges and its rational considerations. One is not better than the other — each excels in certain situations (emotion is great for split-second decisions; reason helps make better choices given a limited number of options) and is detrimental (emotion is easily exploited through reactions to things like loss aversion; reason can lead to overthinking when given too much information) in others.

The book has a lot of information in it; which might also be it’s downfall. It’s clear that Lehrer has attended the Gladwell school of non-fiction writing, anchoring his facts in stories. The difference is that Gladwell employs just a handful of stories over the course of a book, letting each one breathe, having each one carry significant weight. Lehrer stuffs How We Decide with little story after little story, and after a while, you lose the bigger plot. I would have preferred Lehrer to focus on just a few key tales — the firefighter who figured out how to save himself in a raging brush blaze; the kids with the marshmallows; the poker player who embodies the perfect balance of reason and emotion — and let go of the study after study after study that he relates.

Another challenge this book faces is the glut of adjacently-themed texts. Having read Gladwell’s Blink and Outliers, and Ariely’s Predictably Irrational, and having heard the marshmallow story (it’s become a surprisingly prevalent flash-meme in the past few months), I was familiar with much of the book, and in an odd way — I kept wondering if I had read the story earlier in How We Decide, only to realize I had read it in another book.

My guess is this is a good book for those who haven’t been keeping up on the latest discussions in cognitive science, and are looking for an informative foundation. I respect Lehrer for not engaging in the type of specious/fallacious reasoning that has afflicted Gladwell’s work. Lehrer recognizes that the sentiment “it depends” is not only valid, but essential to the discussion, and doesn’t propose sweeping generalizations or applications.

In a post on Maya Design’s blog, David Bishop asks, “Why is it so hard to talk to users?” and presents all the different excuses he’s heard for not engaging with customers in the design process.

In reading his post, I realized the answer to his question is simple, and wrote him the following:

People in organizations are afraid of what their customers actually think. If they had to face this reality, it would call into question many assumptions. People don’t want their assumptions challenged. So, they’d rather a) come up with excuses or b) use unhelpful “market research” tools like surveys and focus groups, tools whose data is squishy enough that it can be interpreted to suit any beliefs.

The reason I’m confident about this answer is because it’s pretty much true of human nature — we resist information that challenges what we already believe to be true. For many, if not most, companies, actual conversations with customers would demonstrate that closely held beliefs are actually canards.

Adaptive Path’s latest R&D project has been released: Mobile Literacy, which addresses the design of mobile technology in emerging markets (in our case, rural India).

There’s tons to chew on. I would start with the concepts, the MobilGlyph and Steampunk.

If those intrigue you, then I’d move to the deep research. Our team spent 6 weeks in the Kutch district of Western India to understand the how uneducated and illiterate peoples use technology, particularly mobile phones, in their lives. A big challenge is that these phones are designed for Western (specifically, northern European) audiences, and many of their assumptions don’t hold true in this area.

The most important thing is to rally others to take part as well. That’s why we’ve made all of our research available, and why we’re sharing the design principles that emerged from that research. We recognize that our concepts are just two of many that could address the challenges of bringing mobile technology to emerging markets. I hope we see many more!

On Friday, they posted my latest at HarvardBusiness.org, “How to Fit Into Your Customers’ Multi-Channel Lives”. I’m trying to get the word out since posting Friday afternoon means it’s largely been ignored.

In a week I will be flying to Sofia, Bulgaria to speak at a day-long Usability Seminar. I will be spending two extra days (April 15-16) to visit, sightsee, eat, and other activities of travel. Thing is, I have no clue what to do. I welcome suggestions, and if by chance any peterme.com readers live there, I’m happy to meet up!

My latest for Harvard Business Online is up, and it’s a departure from the kinds of things I’ve written… and it’s actually not quite like anything I can recall having written before.

I tend not to talk much about web design any more, but my attendance at IA Summit 2009 brought a thought to mind. I sat in Jared Spool’s talk on “Revealing Design Treasures from the Amazon” where he pointed out what others can learn from Amazon’s design decisions.

Among his points is that over the last 15 years Amazon has never “redesigned.” They’ve evolved and tweaked their design so that today it doesn’t really look at all like it did a while ago, but there was never a glorious unveiling of a whole new design. Jared’s been arguing against large-scale redesigns for a while, so this point didn’t surprise me.

What Jared neglects to address is the context in which these design changes take place. Because I’ve seen wholescale redesigns work (I lead one at Epinions), and I also know of many services that currently require a fundamental redesign. Amazon has never warranted a wholescale redesign because Amazon’s basic value proposition has never changed: they sell stuff. And it’s business model hasn’t changed — they make money through selling stuff.

But look at a service like LinkedIn. LinkedIn has done what Jared suggests — many changes over time. The problem is, LinkedIn is a mess from a user experience point of view. I know there’s heaps of value buried in LinkedIn that I cannot realize because I can’t figure out how to use the system. The difference with LinkedIn (compared to Amazon) is that its value proposition has evolved, the services they offer are radically different than what was available at their outset, and their revenue model has also changed. What a site like LinkedIn needs to do is step back, assess who they are *today*, and go back to first principles and design a site that matches their current reality, not a cobbled-together experience that has accreted over time. (And don’t get me wrong — I’m a fan of LinkedIn, and use it frequently. That’s *why* it frustrates me so much, because it’s so incoherent.)

Anyway, my point is that, well, sometimes you do need to blow up what you’re doing and approach your site’s design from whatever fundamentally new position you find yourself. Don’t be locked in to old ways just because they made sense once.

If, like me, you’re a fan of both The Larry Sanders Show and Arrested Development, I strongly implore you to listen to Jesse Thorn’s interview with Jeffrey Tambor (Hank Kingsley, George Bluth, Sr.). It’s an excellent conversation, and Tambor comes across as remarkably thoughtful about his work.

I’ve been thinking about what I’ve termed, in my head at least, a “Post-Ownership Society.” This was spurred by an interview conducted of me on user experience trends 55 years into the future. One thing that’s clear is that the importance people associate with owning stuff will decrease. It will be supplanted by access, experiences, and the act of creation.

This is a meme I’m starting to track. Kevin Kelly wrote about how access is better than ownership in a post on his blog, “Better Than Owning”.

Kelly focuses much of his discussion on media, where it’s patently obvious that in 5-10 years we’ll all be subscribing to access to The Media Cloud, listening/watching/reading pretty much whatever we want when we want (with some exceptions, notably live events).

My key realization about post-ownership is something Kelly neglects to mention — carsharing. So I found it interesting that The New York Times published a lengthy feature last weekend on this emerging phenomenon. (I’ve had this post brewing for a while, so this struck me as serendipitous.)

A few weeks ago NPR’s Science Friday featured an interview with a quantitative psychologist who found that experiences, not things, lead to longer term happiness. (This was presented in the context of Valentine’s Day, and what you should give your honey.)

In early February BusinessWeek had an article on falling prices, though it turns out the prices that fell in 2008 for products; the price of services rose last year.

At the end of last year, futurist Paul Saffo spoke on KQED’s Forum about the emerging Creator Economy, which will push out the Consumer Economy.

I’m bummed I didn’t get to see Lane and Thor’s talk on “The End of Obsolescence: Engineering the Post-Consumer Economy,” as I’m sure it touches on this as well.

I’m excited about this development because I’ve long been an advocate of Less Stuff, and I think it provides a remarkable opportunity for those of us who work in the area of designing for services and experiences.

Far and away, my favorite presentation at TED 2009 was from Willie Smits, who tells his story of how creating an orangutan preserve lead him to re-establish agriculture and provide a living for Indonesians in a blighted part of their country. It’s awesome, and well worth your 20 minutes.

I first saw Siftables at TED 2009, where David Merrill demonstrated them. I immediately tweeted, “Omg. Siftables are awesome. Google it, watch videos. #ted.” Here’s the talk:

My reaction was not unique. David was quite popular for the remainder of the event. There’s something about Siftables that taps into the “Well, duh” reaction, when you see something new that seems so obvious, which feels so inevitable. We had a couple of the folks from Tacolab, the creators of Siftables, over to Adaptive Path a week ago, and since then I’ve been trying to figure out what makes them so special.

We’re in an exciting time in human-computer interaction. There’s a lot of movement to get beyond the keyboard + mouse and towards new methods of interaction and input, whether it’s Wii-motes, iPhone’s touchscreen, or the Microsoft Surface table of CNN’s Magic Wall. And while I’m intrigued by all those tools, Siftables actually opens up a whole new avenue of inquiry.

See, one thing we’re still really stuck on is the Single Screen Interface. All of this activity is still geared toward a single display, whether a TV, mobile device, a computer screen, or a wall. (Seeing Siftables made me only even more frustrated with iPhone, because there’s no reason iPhones shouldn’t be able to directly engage with one another (I mean, even the original Palm Pilots allowed infrared beaming!). Instead, iPhones are isolated, attention-greedy devices.)

Siftables begins to suggest what happens when your computers are small, fast, cheap, and out of control (I very much think of Rodney Brooks’ comments in Errol Morris’ superb film, Fast Cheap and Out of Control.) There’s a whole new opportunity for connection, interaction, swarming, meshing, and emergence.

Importantly, the form of Siftables also speaks to *fun*. They’re blocks, and, as kids know, blocks are fun. The immediate impulse of anyone interacting with Siftables is to *play* with them.

For some reason I can’t quite figure, when I began to think of applications for Siftables, my mind went back, way back, to 1984, and Rocky’s Boots, an educational software title for the Apple II that taught basic computer logic through graphic assemblage of logic circuits. It would be awesome to physically build such circuitry with Siftables, and take advantage of their interactive nature. I then mused on whether you could program Siftables with a visual programming language on the Siftables, and then my head went all recursive and I had to do a hard reboot, probably with alcohol.

I first saw Siftables at TED 2009, where David Merrill demonstrated them. I immediately tweeted, “Omg. Siftables are awesome. Google it, watch videos. #ted.” Here’s the talk:

My reaction was not unique. David was quite popular for the remainder of the event. There’s something about Siftables that taps into the “Well, duh” reaction, when you see something new that seems so obvious, which feels so inevitable. We had a couple of the folks from Tacolab, the creators of Siftables, over to Adaptive Path a week ago, and since then I’ve been trying to figure out what makes them so special.

We’re in an exciting time in human-computer interaction. There’s a lot of movement to get beyond the keyboard + mouse and towards new methods of interaction and input, whether it’s Wii-motes, iPhone’s touchscreen, or the Microsoft Surface table of CNN’s Magic Wall. And while I’m intrigued by all those tools, Siftables actually opens up a whole new avenue of inquiry.

See, one thing we’re still really stuck on is the Single Screen Interface. All of this activity is still geared toward a single display, whether a TV, mobile device, a computer screen, or a wall. (Seeing Siftables made me only even more frustrated with iPhone, because there’s no reason iPhones shouldn’t be able to directly engage with one another (I mean, even the original Palm Pilots allowed infrared beaming!). Instead, iPhones are isolated, attention-greedy devices.)

Siftables begins to suggest what happens when your computers are small, fast, cheap, and out of control (I very much think of Rodney Brooks’ comments in Errol Morris’ superb film, Fast Cheap and Out of Control.) There’s a whole new opportunity for connection, interaction, swarming, meshing, and emergence.

Importantly, the form of Siftables also speaks to *fun*. They’re blocks, and, as kids know, blocks are fun. The immediate impulse of anyone interacting with Siftables is to *play* with them.

For some reason I can’t quite figure, when I began to think of applications for Siftables, my mind went back, way back, to 1984, and Rocky’s Boots, an educational software title for the Apple II that taught basic computer logic through graphic assemblage of logic circuits. It would be awesome to physically build such circuitry with Siftables, and take advantage of their interactive nature. I then mused on whether you could program Siftables with a visual programming language on the Siftables, and then my head went all recursive and I had to do a hard reboot, probably with alcohol.