Don't Demand, don't threaten, Nudge!!! (every else is doing it)

Ok everyone else isn't doing it, but if they were the world would work better and you'd probably be nudging too.

The Book Nudge covers the use of choice architecture to nudge people into doing the right thing while maintaining all of their right to choose the wrong thing. When you create a system you have goals that you'd like to achieve and behaviours that you'd like people to follow. We also design systems all the time, but we may not realize we do it. The system of bed time for the kids, bug tracking for your dev team or what to eat first with a meal. By altering how the choices are presented, we can guide people to make "better" choices while still giving them all right to choose badly. If the cookies and unhealthy foods are placed at the end of the cafeteria line there's less room for "crap" on the tray after running gauntlet of the healthy foods.

The arrangement of the choices in space and time matters. The choice of defaults matters. These can signal impacts that might not be apparent to the user. If light bulbs had the total cost of ownership for 5 years print on their packaging no one would be an incandescent. Make the impacts salient so people know what their choices mean.

This book has changed my outlook as to how and what I design and I think it has great merit as a technique for all of us as we strive to help others see the impacts of their actions. These techniques guide people to make better choices with out restrictive rules. Seems like a better way to me...

What do 7,000 Kevlar vests or 500,000 school lunches have in common

The answer is that these will not be purchased by the US government because $10,000,000 of your money was misappropriated by Representative Don Young. In 2005, Rep. Young added a $10 million dollar construction project to a transportation bill after it had been passed by the House and Senate prior to it being signed by the President.

This seems pretty damn illegal to me and to the Courts as well (see Field v. Clark 1892). During the period between the approval by the Congress and the signing by the President, the legislation cannot be altered without another round of votes. Young added this project with no such vote. The project will be built by a contractor who donated $40,000 to the representative’s campaign. Rep. Young really belongs in jail, not in the House.

I called my Senators, my Rep and the Speaker of the House, explained what Mr. Young had done and asked that they issue formal complaints. I also called Mr. Young’s office and politely asked for his resignation prior to his arrest, which would be imminent were I the Attorney General. I do not expect the best out of Congress, but this kind of thing turns the institution into a joke and I don’t think we can let that stand.

Here are the phones numbers, the call is easy (just remember to breath, be polite and not to threaten with anything other than appropriate legal measures)

Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House: 202-225-0100

Main House Number: 202-224-3121

Main Senate Number: 202-224-3121

Rep. Don Young’s Number: 202-225-5765

The Senators probably have no authority here but they can contact the Speaker of the House and complain seeing as the bill they voted on wasn't the one that became law. Were I a Senator, I’d be a pretty pissed about that.

Drinking the GTD Koolaid

Update: I started using Remember the milk and it is great. RTM integrates with my iGoogle home page, gmail, my smartphone and has a great web application all on its own. You can create todos quickly using dates, days of the week or phrases like "two days before Rob's birthday" and the app does the right thing. It is a do-what-I-mean application.

A while back I started reading Zen Habits and Life Hacker. I heard about the Getting Things Done cult like productivity system and the Zen to Done simplification on it. I read a bunch of articles and downloaded the free[Jello Dashboard for outlook.

I'm totally hooked and am hopeful that I'll be more effective. What I've noticed so far is that my inbox is damn near empty, my outlook todos are now useful (shocking) and I'm feeling in control (hope its not just an illusion). Here are some links to better explain the system:

Beginners Guide to GTD
Why is GTD So Popular
GTD Faq

Weakness, Failures and Strength

When I was a kid Mr. Rogers told me that when things don't go my way its a chance to improve and not a failure. I didn't listen to him then. Well, he is looking like the Buddha now beacuse he was right, really right. The idea isn't new and its easily forgotten. My failures are chances to rethink and explore how I do things. They are data and how I use them determines my effectiveness in my relationships and my job.

My weaknesses are strengths (and sometimes my strengths are weaknesses). If I'm weak on documenting my source code it may force me to write more readable code or may tell me that I need to work on that area. If I'm skilled in using a debugger it may mask the fact that the programs I write are not robust. Fear of failure and the hiding of weaknesses will not help me, they will only make things worse. By embracing and studying all three I stand the best chance to improve and enjoy what I do.


Here are a few others who agree with this theorum:

• Bootstrapping: Starting an Open Source Business With Almost No Money!
  
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• Jason Fried on Embracing Constraints
  
  
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  • Getting Real - The 37signals Book on their practices
    
  
  


• Mindsets, what belief in the ability to grow can do
  
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If life gives you lemons, make a marketing campaign for lemonaide?

Some very creative folks with a little too much time on their hands turned a Mentos diet coke reaction into art. The people at Mentos saw this as a marketing opportunity and jumped on it. The folks at the Coke just don't get it and don't mention it.

If no publicity is bad publicity, then Coke is missing the boat.

Larry Weber, Chairman and CEO of W2 Group, Inc on The Rise of Unpaid Media

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• The Art
  
  
• Mentos: prominent display of the combo art
  


• DietCoke: no mention of the combo art
  
  

Nooks, Crannies and Customers

Where is the boundary between the company and the customer?
Traditionally, its a wall with marketing, sales and support reaching out to the customer. With blogs, wikis and other writable web tools the wall changes into a cloud where both people on the inside and those on the outside can add value to the product in the same virtual space. Using these technologies effectively allows companies build an environment around their product that can allow for the following:

• Customers helping other customers solve problems
• Customers discovering new ways to use the product
  
• Marketing and sales reaping ideas and trend data for R&D from this cooperative space
  
• Building excitement and tapping into the "wisdom of the crowd"
• Feeding the customer's inate desire for a sense of tribe
• Communicating with marketing resistant customers
  

Examples:

• Star Trek fans revived the show and now support a multimedia ecosystem of product offerings
• The Scion enthusiast community allows Toyota to monetize the after-market customization market and capture more dollars from car owners
  

The following are links to better information on how to achieve the goals of reaching marketing resistant customers and improving value:

• Larry Webber on the Rise of Unpaid Media at the Syndicate Conference (quite good)
  
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• an article on Community Documentation
  
• Robert Scoble and Shel Israel: Corporation in a Blogging World
  
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• Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers



• Scott Anderson from HP on Corporate Blogging
  
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Thinking in Pictures

There's too much data out there. Manuel Lima has looked at how people deal with it and created a very interesting site called visual complexity that is a visual catalog of solutions. Its eye candy and possibly useful in a usability kind of way.


Ben Fry, MIT, Anemone project