March 2011
22 posts
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Using computers to judge facial emotional...
I assume that the facial coding being talked about in the BBC article here is following Ekman’s work on micro expressions…Researchers at Thirdsight claim to have developed a smartphone based tool (rather than a human researcher) to decode facial expressions using the phone’s built in camera. More info here. via @AlexCharraudeau
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Amazon is the most effective in balancing building...
From the annual BrandZ rankings Millward Brown have analysed products in terms of desirability and price - with the gap between these figures creating a ‘Value D’ index rating. Just 7% of consumers solely emphasised financial matters when making purchases compared with 20% ten years ago, suggesting that too many brands may overemphasise price and downplay desire. ”The...
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SXSW 2011: The internet is over (via The Guardian)
Oliver Burkeman went to Texas to the South by Southwest festival of film, music and technology, in search of the next big idea. After three days he found it: the boundary between ‘real life’ and ‘online’ has disappeared…read more over here
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Musical genres as graphic design posters
Love these posters from EDIT, via @aldo_b
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Emotional drivers that influence consumer buying...
Quick summary of some of Victor Schwab emotional drivers (22 of the 40 drivers)
People want to gain:
Health, self confidence, time, improved appearance, comfort, leisure, increased enjoyment
They want to save:
Time, discomfort, risks, money, worry, embarrassment, doubts
They want to be:
Efficient, up-to-date, first in things, proud of their possessions, influential over others
They want...
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Taking back control of your work and your life
5 key tips from @tonyschwartz at the SXSW interactive conference
1) Just say no - there is always room for less
2) Create more space in your brain and your life - the less you are thinking about in any given moment the better
3) Do one thing as much as possible - human aren’t designed to perform multiple cognitive tasks well
4) Revisit and reevaluate - revisit old ideas and reevaluate...
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The psychology behind paywalls
The psychological factors at work behind erecting a paywall summarised from a fastcompany article over here:
1) Endowment effect - our tendency to hoard what we already own, even at a greater cost. Ownership has it’s own value beyond simply the utility of the product. The paywalls asks readers to give up free information, and experiments have shown that ownership of something increases...
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Donate to the Japan Tsunami through One Thousand...
www.onethousandcranesforjapan.com
Lovely idea to encourage people to donate - artists have designed origami paper which you can download with the instructions to make an origami crane upon giving a donation.
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Behavioral finance on the King of Queens
Maybe it’s because I’m a bit of a behaviour change geek but I really like the analysis that the nudge blog have done of this King of Queens program:
“An entire King of Queens episode devoted to behavioral finance and economics. Doug gets a Christmas bonus. He and Carrie decide not to spend their windfall (mental accounting). Doug wants to put it in the bank, while Carrie...
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Familiar but minimalist - stripping well known...
I really like a big of minimalist design so much prefer pretty much all of these alternative versions that a2591 have come up with, Mr Muscle even looks a little classy! Though agree with Ruby Psuedo that the nesquik looks a little like a cleaning aid!
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“Nobody wakes up wishing they could hear more about brands”
– Jonathan Salem Baskin
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Predictions that Amazon will be handing out free...
via @brainpicker
more on the prediction here
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Make sure you get a good night sleep before a...
Full article over here, short summary below:
A team of Duke University researchers examined the brains of 29 healthy volunteers using functional MRI, which tracks changes in blood flow in the brain, while the subjects performed a variety of gambling tasks. After a full night of sleep, participants behaved like most people tend to in the real world: guarding against financial loses and...
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Behaviour change, gamification and social norms...
getupp is a pre-commitment app designed to help us do what we should do - it verifies and shares whether you keep or break such commitments. To complete a commitment, show up at the agreed location at the right time, and open the getupp iPhone app to submit your coordinates. Otherwise, in case you fail to show up, your commitment is broken. Outcomes are automatically shared with your friends on...
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Everything you need to know about social networks
via @R_W_I
click below to see full infographic
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Language primes your thought so watch your...
Great talk from Neil Taylor of The Writer about how language influences the way people think and why it’s important to avoid corporate speak to aid idea development and communicating your ideas (and not just because you sound silly).
3 interesting thoughts:
1) If language doesn’t shape your thought at the very least it can prime it
When experimentally testing attitudes towards...
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Recency effect: it's important that your brand is...
Recency trumps quality?
The brain is wired to notice changes and we give greater weight in our decision-making to what is latest, not what is more important or more interesting. This is because of the ‘recency effect’:
“We pay a lot of attention to the most recent information, discounting what came earlier” (George Loewenstein of Carnegie Mellon University)…
“Getting 30...
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Can somebody please buy me a fieldnotes...
fieldnotes
