Simplicity is highly overrated

(in mass-market consumer goods)

Blog post by Don Norman

If a company spent more money to design and build an appliance that worked so well, so automatically, that all it needed was an on-off switch, people would reject it. “This simple looking thing costs more?” They would complain. “What is that company thinking of? I’ll buy the cheaper one with all those extra features – after all, it’s better, right? And I save money.”

Logic and reason, I have to keep explaining, are wonderful virtues, but they are irrelevant in describing human behavior. Trying to prove a point through intelligent, reasonable argumentation is what I call the “engineer’s fallacy.” (Also, the economist’s fallacy.”)  We have to design for the way people really behave [emphasis added], not as engineers or economists would prefer them to behave.

Stats make something else interesting (golf)

Along the same lines as my previous post regarding fashion, statistics are making golf interesting.

Slate's "Moneygolf" series
Seven million shots
How golf really works
The dark art of putting

FYI - "Moneygolf" is a reference to Michael M. Lewis' book "Moneyball", which talks about the field of Sabermetrics (statistics applied to baseball).

FYI2 - After recently watching "The Blind Side" (an emotional drama), I was very surprised at first to find out that it was based on a book by Michael Lewis ("an American contemporary non-fiction author and financial journalist"). However, after finding out that there were two story lines in the book - one about the evolution of NFL offensive strategy and one about Michael Oher - I am once again reminded of the changes that occur when a book is transformed into a movie.

But will it make you happy?

Article at the New York Times

New studies of consumption and happiness show, for instance, that people are happier when they spend money on experiences instead of material objects, when they relish what they plan to buy long before they buy it, and when they stop trying to outdo the Joneses.

New phrase of the week - "hedonic adaptation"

The website mentioned in the article is most likely:
100 Thing Challenge

Data can make ANYTHING interesting

Even fashion, which every person who knows a modicum about me would say is something I show extremely little interest in.

Article at the Wall Street Journal

Online retailers, in particular, see every click we make. They know which brands we've peeked at, how long we pondered, and what we actually purchased. They know the time of day and the days of the week that we shop. They know—and record—our color choices, sizes and tastes so that they can recommend clothes that are in tune with our yearnings.

Some of the data confirm regional stereotypes. Southerners bought more white, green, and pink than other regions' residents, for instance, according to data from private-sale site Hautelook.com, which caters to young, urban professional women. Now I know, too, why I feel like such a loner wearing brown in Los Angeles, where black, white and gray are preferred.

The value of authenticity

Article at Wired.com

If I had access to a secret stash of iPhone knockoffs — a phone that worked identically to the real iPhone, but was a bootleg made of inauthentic parts — how much could I charge? Could I sell them for $10 less than the purchase price of a real iPhone? What about 25 percent off? How much is authenticity worth?

This is a great summary line:

There are many blankets in the world. But there is only one blankie. The best brands are blankies.

The Top Idea in Your Mind

Blog post by Paul Graham

I think most people have one top idea in their mind at any given time. That's the idea their thoughts will drift toward when they're allowed to drift freely. And this idea will thus tend to get all the benefit of that type of thinking, while others are starved of it. Which means it's a disaster to let the wrong idea become the top one in your mind.

You can't directly control where your thoughts drift. If you're controlling them, they're not drifting. But you can control them indirectly, by controlling what situations you let yourself get into. That has been the lesson for me: be careful what you let become critical to you. Try to get yourself into situations where the most urgent problems are ones you want think about.

I've found there are two types of thoughts especially worth avoiding.... One I've already mentioned: thoughts about money. Getting money is almost by definition an attention sink. The other is disputes. These too are engaging in the wrong way: they have the same velcro-like shape as genuinely interesting ideas, but without the substance. So avoid disputes if you want to get real work done.


For me, this ties into the ideal of simplicity - your life should be simple (i.e. free of distractions) so that you can focus on what is important to you. A cluttered life makes it very difficult to choose a desirable "top idea".

A/B Testing and Groundhog Day

Blog post at Coding Horror

Phil doesn't just go on one date with Rita, he goes on thousands of dates. During each date, he makes note of what she likes and responds to, and drops everything she doesn't. At the end he arrives at -- quite literally -- the perfect date. Everything that happens is the most ideal, most desirable version of all possible outcomes on that date on that particular day. Such are the luxuries afforded to a man repeating the same day forever.

But at the end of this perfect date, something impossible happens: Rita rejects Phil.

Phil wasn't making these choices because he honestly believed in them. He was making these choices because he wanted a specific outcome -- winning over Rita -- and the experimental data told him which path he should take. Although the date was technically perfect, it didn't ring true to Rita, and that made all the difference.

While I think the analogy between Groundhog Day and A/B testing is perfect, I disagree with the conclusion that "A/B testing is like sandpaper. You can use it to smooth out details, but you can't actually create anything with it."

I would argue that A/B testing is useful because it reveals what people actually prefer, rather than what they say they prefer. Often there is quite a gap between the two. Also, as many of the commenters pointed out, A/B testing is just a tool - you don't have to limit yourself to testing tiny, incremental tweaks. You can creatively explore the world of possibilities, while basing your final choice on hard data.

As one commenter pointed out, the analogy to Groundhog Day breaks down because at the end of the day, "It's a movie. She rejects him, not because of some inherent failure in the method he uses, but because it was written that way in the script."