SymSys
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Funky Signage - Some examples
Pay close attention to the Explosion that the bikes and the car is heading toward
Virtual Example - "Default settings"
With the advent of the iPad, iPhone and their like, it is a fair expectation that people have to be able to start actively using a device at most up to an hour after buying it off the shelf. This is a little dangerous with the expectation that is set for other mechanisms that still take time to set up. I quote the example of a Paypal account, Paypal will deposit money into your account (small denominations, under a dollar each) which you need to verify in order to use their service. This leads to customer displeasure because the customer has now grown accustomed to instant gratification. Plans based on these instant gratifications also have disastrous consequences and should never be encouraged.
Real-World Example - "Expecting Extremes"
One of the most interesting examples I can think of in which people make mistakes and errors are primarily errors of judgment. There is a sport called cricket (but the general principle is consistent with any bat/ball sport like baseball) in which you have to hit the ball with a bat and score runs while trying not to miss the ball. There is this tendency to overcompensate when you know that the ball is swinging. The swing/seam movement is due to a lot of factors other than the skill of the bowler. These include weather conditions and the "pitch" conditions, something which is very hard to approximate for. The best way to hit a delivery is to get in the line of the ball and then swat it away. However when there are balls that have deviated from the expected path because of seam/swing, you tend to believe that the same will happen again. This is generally consistent with deviant balls as well which on bouncing keep low. So you are on guard not necessarily for the "best case" but when the expectations are lowered. The same is the case for a fielder who has got a bad bounce on the ball or who has mis-fielded because of hostile conditions on the ground. This is an error in judgment and is a failure to recognize the full spectrum of movement of the ball. My theory is that although the extremes have shifted (keeping low, high movement), the mean has moved only a little to the side of the errant behavior. People at times expect an extreme behavior which leads to their undoing.
Interview Hell
Our class project for MS&E 283 is a pretty complex system. We need to invade the privacy of Freshmen in a dorm called FroSoCo and then ask intelligent questions to devise a solution to bike safety on campus. This involved me going around to their dorms and asking questions to these freshmen with no particular reward in sight. I have a feeling that in Stanford, pretty much every event pre-supposes that you will have at least pizza and cookies for making people spend their time there. So, there I was trying to interact with people who have the least interest in safety - their own. My main objective here was to glean out any major points that would provide some sort of insight on why people leave their helmets at home and are least concerned about safety. What makes this challenging is that this interview is in essence a favor that they are doing for you. There is no conceivable way that you can repay them (Except say sheepishly that you will be the first responder to their survey monkey survey whenever they have a class project due). The easiest way to get around to this problem is by a mindset. Set yourself up for rejection with a smile on your face. Buying some candy as a tempting mechanism (I learnt this from campus career fairs) also helps. There is also value in throwing out some introductions through a community associate but that is usually going to antagonize you to some groups versus make you a friend to a very limited circle. The CA will also have a very finite number of events where she would want to throw her weight in the ring. Participation in dorm meetings and other community dinners would be a higher precedence than a one-off interview.
Wordpress Sucks!
Wordpress is a pretty decent blogging tool. Of course, it has its limitations, and some pretty big ones at that. There is a movement towards making it seem like it is the one stop shop for all content management system related problems. Well, to that, there really isnt that much traction. Let me compare the UI of blogger and wordpress on the first page itself. Wordpress is cluttered, not intuitive and there is a tiny film that shows where you should sign in. After signing in, it takes you ages to find out where your blogs are. “freshly pressed” are supposed to denote the latest blogs hosted in wordpress. In the age of meta readers and aggregators like Pulse, this is an unnecessary first page to have. Just to find your page is a headache. Is it this tiny wordpress icon on the left? Is it on any one of the 5 tabs? All this is still a minor hassle. What baffles me is how you insert media into a post. The tab on a new post is intuitive enough. It is the first tab and it takes you to a rich text editor which will then let you type. Now, I have to embed a presentation to it. The richly advertised 1 GB sharing space for free should be utilized right? Well, the trouble is that I cannot find that button anywhere, there is no way to select a file and upload it from the new post workflow. “But I did it last week, how can this be?” So I log out, log back in. I go to the tab which says “My Blogs”. This allows me to look at the blogs, now if i enter the workflow for a new post through this page, I can finally upload media! This was an education which took more than 2 hours. Blogging should not be so hard.
Wordpress Sucks!
Wordpress is a pretty decent blogging tool. Of course, it has its limitations, and some pretty big ones at that. There is a movement towards making it seem like it is the one stop shop for all content management system related problems. Well, to that, there really isnt that much traction. Let me compare the UI of blogger and wordpress on the first page itself. Wordpress is cluttered, not intuitive and there is a tiny film that shows where you should sign in. After signing in, it takes you ages to find out where your blogs are. “freshly pressed” are supposed to denote the latest blogs hosted in wordpress. In the age of meta readers and aggregators like Pulse, this is an unnecessary first page to have. Just to find your page is a headache. Is it this tiny wordpress icon on the left? Is it on any one of the 5 tabs? All this is still a minor hassle. What baffles me is how you insert media into a post. The tab on a new post is intuitive enough. It is the first tab and it takes you to a rich text editor which will then let you type. Now, I have to embed a presentation to it. The richly advertised 1 GB sharing space for free should be utilized right? Well, the trouble is that I cannot find that button anywhere, there is no way to select a file and upload it from the new post workflow. “But I did it last week, how can this be?” So I log out, log back in. I go to the tab which says “My Blogs”. This allows me to look at the blogs, now if i enter the workflow for a new post through this page, I can finally upload media! This was an education which took more than 2 hours. Blogging should not be so hard.
Fun with BTLab
Learn more about BTLab here
After reviewing the cheat sheet for the BTlab output, I decided to go with the easier (comparatively) option of going with mode 3. Let me explain about the action of Mode 3 as we go along the code.
[I set up the mode 3 and then asked the subject; let’s call the subject X from here on in]
“So I can use only + or -?”
[Nope, you can use anything you want]
“I ll stick to + or – or do over”
1+
+
1+1
+
“So its about the number of the characters”
[X took an agonizingly long time to start, X took an age to figure out that the number of characters would show up. And bearing in mind that this used only 1, I knew it was going to be a long session]
1+11+1+1
+++
[I thought this would be the aha moment and alleviate any doubts at all]
1+1+1+1
+++
1+1+1+1+1+1+
++++++
[After verifying this, X decided to move on, or so I thought]
1-1-1
--
1-1-11
--
1-1-111--
----
1-1------
-------
[After the +, all the – signs were verified. This was excruciating. However, with every validation, X seemed to be getting more confident, deleting inputs and adding new ones, before finally getting rid of numbers and inputting characters totally]
--
-------
-----------
[I thought that this would be done for all the alphabets, I guided X back on track to the mystery key]
2q3e
Qqeee
[Validation for the alphabets, we are 10 minutes into the experiment, the mystery key has not been pressed once yet. I believe that X was extremely concerned about nailing down all the constants before moving on to the one variable. This environmental verification is a mindset I feel. Since I am asking X to do me a favor, X wants to make sure that there are no tricks involved, I feel that there is a constant feeling that there would be an easy answer that is hiding in plain sight – or some sort of a trick question mentality. This led to the hyper verification. I also feel that there was distrust, more towards the experimenter than towards the experiment.]
4q3e
Qqqqeee
[More validation]
4?
4?
4?
[The first glimmer of hope appeared and X seemed to think that the mystery key did not do anything. X was about to leave before I suggested if X was sure or not]
2a3e4?
Aaeeeaaeee
[This seemed to X that the mystery key just duplicated the output. There was a constant look to me saying “Is this it?” “Is this the right answer?” without going through all the possible paths]
2a3r4?
[Just meaningless verification. At this point, I was worried that I did not explain enough or explain well enough]
4?
4?4?
4?4?4?
4?4?4?4?
[This also seemed to X that the button duplicated. I prodded along to say that it did nothing but spit the output when there was only one mystery character. X just gave up after postulating that it was 1) Double negatives cancel each other out like in algebra 2) The button was duplicating if there was prior input. I deemed the second option close enough and ended X’s misery]
Overall, this seems that there are a number of key takeaways
1. The experiment depends a lot on the reputation on the experimenter as well as the experiment. Not one single complaint was made about the graphics of the javascript gizmo
2. There seemed to be a play on how fast you can find the answer given the verification of the environmental factors (Every key bar the mystery key)
3. The A-ha moments sprung more out of verification than out of any real insights
4. There was a definite A-ha moment when the subject was told of what the mystery key does. It just seemed like a chase in search of justification
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