Though I've already shared these piecemeal on Google+, I figrueed I should put them all in one album so I can more easily find them later and for others to "enjoy".

As always, MarsCon was a great weekend.

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So, I am really enjoying this driving/navigation app, called Waze and as I am wont to do with things I like, I'm now thinking about how they could improve the user experience to make it even better.  A couple of things come to mind:

• Quick Reports: Right now, on my iPad, I have to click through several options to report something.  The app should learn my most common reports and offer a "Top 3" menu to give me the ability to very quickly click-to-report those things I most often report.  There are a couple of pros and cons to my suggestion, though.  The primary reason to do this is that it induces me to report more often because it's easier to do so.  But the downside is that while an adaptive menu works great for providing the most sensible default (Sensible defaults are a core requirement of good UX), "adaptive" is another name for "changes without warning".  As any good UX expert will stell you, changes to the UI require the user to think before acting and thinking before acting greatly lessens the likelihood of acting.  An alternative could be setting up a sensible default quick-report menu, but then locking it in as stable and allowing the user to modify after it's created.  Then they are in control.  People crave control until they have it.  Then then just want it to work without input.  For that reason, control is a tricky thing to provide in a good UX.
• Modify the reward Algorithm: The app throws out raid candy periodically to gain points.  Its a good way to induce usage.  You've done a good job with choice architecture there.  We are social animals and making the social aspect salient (do I have more points than others in my region?) means making the app more interesting to use.  Social proof is a powerful tool in the Choice Architect's tool-chest.  That said, I don't know how you determine when road candy shows up, but you should consider tweaking the math so that users get slightly more candy at the beginning and end of a given trip.  We are naturally more inclined to remember beginnings and endings.  Ramping the candy up then (and consequently ramping it down in the middle) means making the reward more memorable and salient to me when I'm not in the app.
• Rankings should show who I'm better than: Right now, you show me my overall rank, which is a number showing me where I sit relative to the top.  As a human being, though, I don't care nearly as much about how many people are over me as how many are under.  I want to know that I've defeated 203,711 poor souls, not that I'm ranked 3078 overall.  So, consider changing the rank from a single number to a fraction (You are ranked 3078 out of 203,711 active users) or maybe as a percentile (You are are ranked higher than 74% of active users).  Something like that is motivating! People want to be motivated.  Competition motivates, but we need to know how we are doing in the competition.

There's more that could be done, but that hits the top 3 that struck me on my holiday vacation drive.  Hope that helps.

The subject of leadership and management came up at work and someone made the claim that behind the drive toward leadership was envy. I didn't quite buy the argument, but couldn't articulate why. Being as I'm deeply broken inside, I had no recourse but to begin dissecting the emotion of envy and examining what it is.

First, I started writing down a list of emotions that are often conflated with envy; jealousy, admiration, resentment, egalitarianism, ambition, and greed. Then I set about understanding how to distinguish each from envy.

I noticed that these emotions shared a common set of attributes. Each seems to have a subject (the person feeling the emotion), a rival (the person in possession of the thing in question), and an object (the thing in question).

Jealousy, it seems, can be distinguished from envy by virtue of the focus of the subject. If the focus of the subject is the rival, then it's envy, but if the focus is the object, it's jealousy. Put differently, if you have the attention of a beautiful girl and I want that attention for myself, I am jealous. If I'm just unhappy that you are getting that attention, it's envy.

Admiration can be distinguished from envy by virtue of what would satisfy the emotional need. If a copy of the object would suffice to make me happy, then it was admiration. If I won't be happy without having the original, then it was envy. For example, if you have a great job and I work hard so that I can get a great job, too, then I admired you. If, instead, I would only be happy if I got you removed from the job and took your place, then I was experiencing envy.

Egalitarianism is often called another name for class envy or wealth envy. While I think a lot of people hide their envy behind an egalitarian mask, I don't believe they are the same thing. I posit that if the subject would be more content to see both him and his rival without the object, then is is legitimately egalitarian. If, however, he would be equally or more content if he possessed the object instead of his rival, then his egalitarianism is a charade. The latter is envy. So, if you have a mansion and a limo and I would prefer that no one have such things, then I am thinking as an egalitarian. If I complain about your mansion and limo, but would secretly like to have one myself, it's simple envy.

On reflection, I found that resentment, ambition, and greed are not dichotomous with envy. One can have a resentful envy, a greedy jealousy, or an ambitious admiration. These emotions don't sit beside but separate from envy and the like, but instead enhance or modify them.

This brought questions to my mind:

1. Does a desire to challenge oneself have a rival and an object?
2. Does a desire for power inherently have a rival?
3. Does envy harm the subject to feel it?
4. Does envy harm the rival who is made aware?
5. Is envy localized to perceived competitors?
6. Does focus on rival or object modify admiration in a meaningful way like it does for envy and jealousy?

None of this really directly addresses the question that was originally posed, but now I'm more confidently able to discuss it.

And yeah, I'm a weirdo. Deal with it.

More on Burying the Sign Up Button

...when they took away the “sign up” button and instead put a “learn more” button at the bottom of the page they got a 350% increase in sign ups...

Choice architecture is a fascination of mine. I find the user-directive portion of user experience design to be one of the more interesting and underutilized aspects of UX/UI work. Too often the concentration is on what looks good or what color feels right. Not enough time is spent on what you want the user to actually do.

When I was DC recently, I took a picture of trash cans. A few people noticed and asked my about that pic in my vacation gallery. The answer is easy. Choice Architecture. They did a great job of it. Here's the picture I took:

Do you see the choice architecture at work?  The goal of the museum was to get people to recycle intelligently.  They could have just labeled the cans "Food", "Recycle", and "Trash".  They would have gotten a few people doing it right and most people dumping everything into "Trash".  Why? Because in Choice Architecture saliency is a key ingredient. If we know that oil is limited and funds terrorism, why don't we all conserve more? Because the ramifications of these facts are not salient at the gas pump or the car dealership. Likewise, we know landfills are bad for the environent, so why don't we recycle more? That fact isn't salient when we are throwing things away.  This signage makes the ramifiations of your choice salient to you.  That salience drives your choices subtly, but powerfully.

• Nudge by Thaler and Sunstein

The world has a way of kicking me in the face. It waits 'til I'm smiling, naively staring at a promising horizon, imagining all the perfection and joy I have coming to me. Then...BAM! My lip is bleeding, eyes watering so bad I can't see the color of my own shirt, let alone a promising horizon.

I am stupid, though. I forget how it happens. Every time I see that horizon, I stare expectantly when a smarter man would just duck. Thats my curse, you know. Rather than floundering through life in the fetal position, I stand tall —brave and dumb—for the next kick.

But maybe it's my gift, too. I allow myself to be happy in the face of so many reasons not to. Maybe that's how I kick the world back in its face.

You can kill me, world, but you can't defeat me.

So, Matt comes by my office this morning while I'm drinking my coffee.  He tells a joke and out spits the coffee every which a way.  I haven't done that in a while.  I mean, it spewed all over me and my desk.  Solid, Matt.  Asshole!  :)

How do I recover grace and dignity?  Starbucks!  Yes I am drinking my nonfat Mocha as I type this.

That's how you take a day that starts off less awesome and rediscovered its awesomeness.  Sometimes, it just takes such a small thing to make a person smile.  Today, that small thing is Starbucks Mocha.  For some non-discriminating women, that small thing may be Matt's penis.

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