Men and women seem to be coming from opposite directions some of the time. There are a number of frameworks for understanding this, the most popular being John Gray’s Men are from Mars, women are from Venus. While an interesting read, it doesn’t quite cover the reality of men and women’s interactions, because of one fundamental assumption – that all men are thinkers and all women are feelers. This needs unpacking a bit.
This is going to be a bit jumbled because it covers a lot of things, and I have just got up. Cashless systems for small transactions are obviously here now. Are they a good thing for us, for the retailer, both, or neither?
From my point of view, cash is easy. I don’t struggle to put my hand in my pocket and retrieve some coins or notes. I can’t imagine why anyone would find this difficult. What I would struggle with is keeping track of how much I have spent. This might encourage me to spend more.
From a retailers point of view, cashless is good for them for two reasons. Firstly, it’s quicker so they can process more transactions with fewer staff. Secondly, if I do spend more on impulse because I have lost track of how much money I actually have, then they sell more stuff.
So at this point, it seems pretty stacked in favour of the retailer. Reading the marketing copy, it’s all about presenting this in terms of how it will benefit me. How easy it is. How free I will be blah blah. Persuasive lies.
So this leads neatly on to why I see red at a lot of marketing. I don’t have a problem with people promoting their products and services as long as they are straight up about it. What I don’t want to see is self serving fluff that tries to persuade me that the Next Big Thing is actually for my benefit. Come on Corporations, I know you are primarily driven by the need to provide return for your shareholders. My happiness only matters in that I stay a customer and keep buying your stuff.
“Why not relax with a INSERT PRODUCT NAME HERE?” they coo. I can think of a thousand reasons, Mr Marketing man. Not least of which are that the economy is declining and we could all be out of a job soon. Or that your product is actually really unhealthy and will benefit me in no way whatsoever. Or that your corporate practices are highly dubious.
Just call a spade a spade for once. Seth Godin talks about authentic marketing, Cluetrain manifesto is all about not being evil and talking crap to your customers. I have been feeling this way about fluffy marketing for a long time – I am really glad to see that there are other people saying the same thing more eloquently that I and getting listened to.
I have tried to read his book The Tao of Physics several times but get all bamboozled. He has just popped up again in Gerber’s The E-Myth. I must look more into what Capra has been saying – I feel it is important!
Systems theory looks at the world in terms of the interrelatedness and interdependence of all phenomena, and in this framework an integrated whole whose properties cannot be reduced to those of its parts is called a system. Living organisms, societies, and ecosystems are all systems. It is fascinating to see that the ancient Chinese idea of yin and yang is related to an essential property of natural systems that has only recently been studied in Western science.
Another nugget from a chapter preface in Science and Sanity:
“Nevertheless, the consuming hunger of the uncritical mind for what it imagines to be certainty or finality impels it to feast upon shadows in the prevailing famine of substance.”
Bell, E. T.
In other words, when people don’t know they jump to conclusions. Such is the case with evolution vs creation. We just don’t know at the moment, and to rule either out is to make a foolish mistake. It’s ok to not know for the time being.
Evolutionary Psychology is especially guilty of “feasting on shadows”, jumping to wild conclusions about how we have ended up preferring certain things or behaving in certain ways, with no testable hypotheses…
I came across this quote at uni, but only just saw it in connection with interfaces and gadgets:
Introspective psychology and analytical philosophy of the self, of perception and of will, do not seem to take into account that in any well-made machine one is ignorant of the working of most of the parts – the better they work, the less are we conscious of them. Thus it is very unlikely that introspection will reveal those intermediate processes which are most important
Kenneth Craik, The Nature Of Explanation (1943)
The best designs are ones that we don’t even notice. The best interfaces are the ones that seem to have us hovering over the link we need without us even realising we are doing it. I think this is why people get so frustrated with computers, because they are supposed to be a tool, a means to an end, but often fail utterly to help us achieve our ends and it becomes apparent how much there is to go wrong.
Good use of AJAX and jQuery can help make interfaces invisible, especially when they are loading things ahead of time so when you click that link, it is there instantly for you. I am going to aim for invisibility in my web interfaces, and see if other people find them invisible too.
