Notes from The HP Way

David Packard’s memoir about Hewlett-Packard’s growth is notable mostly for its consistency. The book’s “rah-rah” tone is consistently upbeat, so much so that I often doubted he was telling everything about the story. But the examples of his and Bill Hewlett’s decision-making were consistently good and from a consistent point of view that was inspiring and refreshing. As we go through yet another dot-com craze, it’s good to see the history of a company that has lasted longer than the fads.

### Notes

Packard talked about his famous “management by walking around” strategy, which sounds a little too much like _Office Space_’s “Peter…what’s happening?” boss:

> That was a very important lesson for me–that personal communication was often necessary to back up written instructions. That was the genesis of what became “management by walking around” at the Hewlett-Packard company. – 27

> We have a technique at HP for helping managers and supervisors know their people and understand the work their people are doing, while at the same time making themselves more visible and accessible to their people. It’s called MBWA–“management by walking around.” – 155

Interestingly, they priced their products the same way Google priced their secondary stock offering–by the number’s similarity to famous numbers:

> Our pricing was even more naive: We set it at $54.40 not because of any cost calculations but because, of all things, it reminded us of “54-40 or Fight!” (the 1844 slogan used in the campaign to establish the northern border of the United States in the Pacific Northwest). We soon discovered we couldn’t afford to build the machines for that price… – 42

One of their first partners held meetings to help him learn about things; great idea!

> He loved to expound and philosophize on new ideas. And whenever he wanted to learn more about something, he’d organize a seminar at his shop and invite me and a few other people, usually from Stanford. – 43

Advice from an engineer the bank sent to check out the new company; to be careful how much money and opportunity to take early on:

> He said that more business die from indigestion than starvation. I have observed the truth of that advice many times since then. – 52

HP’s original company objectives are fascinating:

>1. Profit…”profit is the best single measure of our contribution to society”
2. Customers
3. Field of Interest…”limiting our involvement to fields in which we have capability and can make a contribution”
4. Growth
5. Employees
6. Organization
7. Citizenship…”making contributions to the community and to the institutions in our society which generate the environment in which we operate” – 80

More on profit:

> If we do a good job, customers pay us more for our products than the sum of our costs in producing and distributing them. This difference, our profit, represents _the value we add to the resources we utilize_. – 83

Again similarities to Google, this time in choosing products. It’s easy to do this when your customers are all engineers too. Google should be careful about this now, though:

> We called it the “next bench” syndrome. If the idea for a new instrument appealed to the HP engineer working at the next bench, it would very likely appeal to our customers as well. – 97

But they had profit (a.k.a. “the measure of our contribution”) make the final product decisions, which biased them toward especially innovative products:

> At HP we often used to select projects on the basis of a six-to-one engineering return. That is, the profit we expected to derive over the lifetime of the product should be at least six times greater than the cost of developing the product. – 97

The famous award for “extraordinary contempt and defiance”; an example of big company process trying to kill a really good idea, something many growing companies should watch out for:

> He found that I, among others, had requested it be discontinued. He persuaded his R&D manager to rush the monitor into production…representing sales revenue of $35 million for the company. Several years later…I presented Chuck with a medal for “extraordinary contempt and defiance beyond the normal call of engineering duty.” – 108

Interestingly, they took the opposite approach that Google’s “Founders Awards” do:

> We had to try to emphasize and strengthen [teamwork]. That’s one of the reasons we didn’t single out divisions or groups that were doing particularly well…It’s imperative that there be a strong spirit of helpfulness and cooperation among all elements of the company… – 128

One weird quirk about hiring back ex-employees, often whom had left to start their own companies:

> We’ve always taken the view that as long as they have not worked for a direct competitor…they are welcomed back. – 138

HP’s strategy for growth, splitting along product lines:

> So it became our policy…to split off part of the division, giving it responsibility for an established, profitable product line and usually moving it to a new but nearby location. – 146

The power of prototypes!

> I wanted to build two prototype fighter planes…The F16 has become the best air force fighter plane, and the F17–renamed the F18–has become the best navy fighter. – 181-2

There will be more…

> When I think of the phenomenal growth of the electronics industry over the last fifty years, I realize how fortunate Bill Hewlett and I were to be in on the ground floor…I remember lamenting that I had been born one hundred years too late, that all the frontiers had been conquered, and that my generation would be deprived of the pioneering opportunities offered our forebears. But in fact, we went on to make breathtaking advances in the twentieth century. – 191

Notes from The Man in the High Castle

I was a fan of Philip K. Dick’s _Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep_, the inspiration for _Blade Runner_, and thought his idea for _The Man in the High Castle_, a dystopian vision of a world where Germany and Japan won WWII, might be interesting. So I read it straight through in a day and was, well, confused. People were mostly just going about their business, buying and selling things, having families and going to work. The book wasn’t terribly climactic, which somehow suited the strange cast of characters and their dispirate activities. There wasn’t anyone really spectacular, nor a definite protagonist, just people going through life. It reflects the ‘antique’ salesman’s definition of what makes something important:

> Wyndham-Matson’s point is a radically relativist one: ‘”a gun goes through a famous battle, like the Meuse-Argonne, and it’s the same as if it hadn’t, unless you know. It’s in here.” He tapped his head. “In the mind, not the gun”‘.

— [review of the book](http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/highcastle.htm)

I was looking for a cool alternative-history novel, but as [another review](http://pages.prodigy.net/aesir/mhc.htm) notes, that’s not really what this book is about:

> I would go so a far as to say that anyone looking for historical verisimilitude in this book is missing the point. This is not an alternative-history novel, but an anti-history novel. The book suggests that any history is fundamentally unreal. This is not to say that all history is illusion, or that there is nothing to choose between one historical scenario and another, but that there is a truth that is true even if events contradict it.

The idea I liked the most about this is the faith in life to balance itself. The unfinished sequel to this book explores more the parallel/alternate universe that we just glimpse in TMITHC. It’s the self-preservation instinct that kicks in when we sense something is dangerous, even arguably things we’re not genetically prepared for, like nuclear war, which some psychologists now believe we back away from instinctively despite having no experience with it. Again from the review:

> The message of this book is not very different from that of Ursula LeGuin’s, _The Lathe of Heaven._ Using the device of dreams that shape reality, that story suggests that history comes back into balance when events threaten to destroy the world; not just the future changes, but the past changes as well. Similarly, the author of _The Grasshopper Lies Heavy_ says he wrote it to show that the Germans and the Japanese did not win the war, even though history says they did. This leaves us to speculate whether the history we know, or that we think we know, might similarly be untrue, even if it is factual.

In the end so much of the novel is about how history and meaning is all in our heads; that by perceiving differently we can see more of the truth. In my experience the world is not that complicated. There is real good and real evil, and real opportunity to change things. You don’t have to look very far or cleverly to find it. While I appreciate and resonate with the concept of the world righting itself in the end, it must be through action, not perception, that it happens.

Notes from Three Scientists and Their Gods

It took me a long time to track down a copy of Robert Wright’s first book, Three Scientists and Their Gods, but the wait was worth it. Turns out his first book is also the most applicable to my work (the other two were fascinating but a bit less commercially viable). In 3 Scientists, Wright explores the way three different scientists see information, life, and the connections between them.

Ed Fredkin is the most outspoken on the information paradigm, stating that he believes the universe is a giant computer, created to solve some immense problem (such as, “What would a universe look like?”). Edward Wilson, with his background in biology, is concerned with how the brain holds information and how it might hold more. Kenneth Boulding talks a little about everything, but holds fast to his religious convictions and reinforces them by tying (or allowing Wright to tie) religious traditions to evolutionary principles.

The book continues (or starts, I guess–I read his three books out of order) Wright’s simultaneous skepticism of and fascination with religion and universal truth. While I’ve come down on the religious side of the debate, it’s interesting to see Wright take religion to the task without being biased against it. The most important part of any decision process is not allowing your sunk costs to prejudice you against possible change. Henry Ford said, “My advice to young men is to be ready to revise any system, scrap any methods, abandon any theory if the success of the job demands it.” Figuring out your god is a pretty important job.

### Ed Fredkin

Ed Fredkin’s theory of digital physics clashes with our tendency to believe in the continuity of space and time. But since we ourselves are made of the same stuff, how could we see beyond it? (25)

> Could _any_ informational process sense its ultimate constituents? The point is that the basic units of time and space in Fredkin’s universe don’t just _happen_ to be imperceptibly small. So long as the creatures doing the perceiving are in that universe, the units _have_ to be imperceptibly small.

Concrete? Or elemental?

> “I’ve come to the conclusion that the most concrete thing in the world is information. (27)

The danger of _knowing_ too much and _doing_ too little (35):

> Fredkin’s focus was intense but undisciplined, and it tended to stray from a problem as soon as he was confident that, _in principle_, he understood the solution.

Why we try…

> Scientists don’t discover in order to know; they know in order to discover – Alfred North Whitehead (37)

The universe as a computer whose program must be run in its entirety to find the answer. (68)

> Why does this giant computer of a universe exist? It’s simple, Fredkin explains: “The reason is there is no way to know the answer to some question any faster than what’s going on.”

Just like there’s no shortcut for some design process steps…if the universe is a giant computer, then who made it and why is it running? (68)

> “Suppose, just for the sake of argument, that there is this all-powerful God. And he’s thinking of creating this universe…if he’s as all-powerful as you might imagine, he can say to himself, ‘Wait a minute, why waste the time? I can create the whole thing, or I can just think about it for a minute and just realize what’s going to happen so that I don’t have to bother.’ What I say is…I don’t care how powerful God is; he cannot know the answer to the question any faster than doing it…There’s no shortcut.

Information -> Inform-(ation) -> In–formation (82)

Etymology of “information” (89)

> The first definition of _inform_ in the _Oxford English Dictionary_ is “to give form to, put into form or shape.” The OED’s earliest example of the word’s use in that sense comes from 1590, when Edmund Spense wrote in _The Faerie Queene_ about “infinite shapes of creatures…informed in the mud”. Only metaphorically did _information_ come to have anything to do with communication; to “inform” a mind or a belief or a decision was to impose form on it, bring ordered knowledge to it.

Wordplay…but also guidance on what information can and should do.

> Information lies not just in form; information lies in formation. (94)

An early definition of “information” (95)

> All we can confidently say about real-life information so far is that it has form and is sometimes involved in the creation of form.

Another level in the hierarchy of information (101)

> You might…say that the _meaning_ of a message is the behavior it induces, and the _truth_ of a message depends on whether that behavior has consequences beneficial to the behaver.

And about information and meaning (110)

> Perhaps the best way to characterize the relationship between DNA and meaning is to say that DNA is the _source_ of meaning. It takes information about the environment and turns it into behavior…

### Edward O. Wilson

Work is satisfying for some (142)

> “I feel it really is true that work is a central source of meaning for human beings.

A scientist is a “systems builder” (175)

“Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see”…(175)

> “You have to have something like faith. You have to believe as you go on that in fact there is some major organizing principle that remains to be discovered.”

Wilson published a book in 1985 called _The Caveman and the Bomb_, “a look at how our genetic endowment bodes for the prospects of averting nuclear war”…?!? (180)

The power of the web: information storage outside the brain. (187)

> The size of any one person’s memory is limited by the genes, and the only way to exceed this limit is to store information outside the cranium.

### Kenneth Boulding

“The principle of increasingly unfavorable internal structure” – why things can’t grow and keep the same form. (249)

> If you took a flea and somehow enlarged its dimensions until it reached the size of a dog, its legs would break under its own weight.

Teilhard de Chardin believed that a “superorganism” of human knowledge would not mean sacrificing the individual, despite historical evidence to the contrary. (267)

> “Individualization” and “aggregation,” he said, are not only compatible but in some ways inseparable; we realize our identities most fully when devoted to a greater whole.

“Horizontal transmission” – when something spreads between cultures, friends, cubicles; spreading by emulation, not genetic transmission. (276)

The problem of consciousness.

> Why _does_ it feel like something to be a human being? (286)

Wright’s own desire for God seems to sprout from questions about conciousness. (287)

> So this is what I find so weird about consciousness: the very thing that gives life a kind of meaning is the thing that the theory of natural selection doesn’t quite explain.

Charles Kingsley (an Anglican clergyman) reacted to Darwin’s _Origin_ positively (291)

> “I have gradually learnt to see that it is just as noble a conception of Deity, to believe that He created primal forms capable of self-development…as to believe that He required a fresh act of intervention to supply the _lacunas_ which he himself had made.”

Apparently the word “religion” comes from the same root as “ligament”, _ligare_: “to bind together”. I feel like I’ve heard that word before…(292)

### Conclusions

Wright argues that the same self-preservation tendencies that helped us evolve past the amoeba and gorilla stages transfer to the societal level as well.

> Just as genetic self-interest manifested itself in the form of organismic and then social coherence, and human self-interest spawned organizations of much larger scope, including nations, various common threats show signs of translating individual and national self-interest into global order.

And Wright’s religious curiosity gets the best of him.

> Now for the bonus question: What does it mean that some fairly reasonable (as these things go) attempts to extract purpose and meaning from evolution bear results remarkably like longstanding doctrine of the world’s great religions?

_I_ think that religion’s God, heaven, and hell may be a lot closer than we think…if “our world” operates a lot like “God’s world” does…

Notes from In the Beginning was the Command Line

Notes from Neal Stepheson’s In the Beginning was the Command Line.

• HTML as a telegram; one-way and non-interactive (obviously written before AJAX…).

  Anyone can learn HTML and many people do. The important thing is that no matter what splendid multimedia web pages they might represent, HTML files are just telegrams.

• Culture’s ok

  The only real problem is that anyone who has no culture, other than this global monoculture, is completely screwed. Anyone who grows up watching TV, never sees any religion or philosophy, is raised in an atmosphere of moral relativism…is going to come out into the world as one pretty feckless human being…On the other hand, if you are raised within some specific culture, you end up with a basic set of tools that you can use to think about and understand the world. You might use those tools to reject the culture you were raised in, but at least you’ve got some tools.

• And so are interfaces, even those that disassociate you a bit from the “guts” of the system.

  It simply is the case that we are way too busy, nowadays, to comprehend everything in detail. And it’s better to comprehend it dimly, through an interface, than not at all.

• The pathological behavior of corporations inhibits their products and their support.

  Commercial OS companies like Apple and Microsoft can’t go around admitting that their software has bugs and that it crashes all the time, any more than Disney can issue press releases stating that Mickey Mouse is an actor in a suit…Of course, this behavior is not as pathological in a corporation as it would be in a human being.

• How feature creep happens; because of GUIs…

  GUIs tend to impose a large overhead on every single piece of software, even the smallest, and this overhead completely changes the programming environment. Small utility programs are no longer worth writing. Their functions, instead, tend to get swallowed up into omnibus software packages.

• The universe as an operating system much like Ed Fredkin in Robert Wright’s Three Scientists and Their Gods:

  Somewhere outside of and beyond our universe is an operating system, coded up over incalculable spans of time by some kind of hacker-demiurge…The demiurge sits at his teletype, pounding out one command line after another…and when he’s finished typing out the command line, his right pinky hesitates above the ENTER key for an aeon or two, wondering what’s going to happen; then down it comes–and the WHACK you hear is another Big Bang.

• I disagree with Stepheson; I think this interface would be pretty cool, like the logical extension of the experience economy into the transformation economy into the “life” economy.

  After a few releases the software would begin to look even simpler: you would boot it up and it would present you with a dialog box with a single large button in the middle labeled: LIVE. Once you had clicked that button, your life would begin.

• A wonderful interface designer’s creedo follows from this idea:

  What would the engineer say, after you had explained your problem, and enumerated all of the dissatisfactions in your life? He would probably tell you that life is a very hard and complicated thing; that no interface can change that; that anyone who believes otherwise is a sucker; and that if you don’t like having choices made for you, you should start making your own.

Blink

Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, _Blink_, had a lot to live up to. After an incredible debut with _The Tipping Point_, Gladwell has been criticized for a schizophrenic approach that contradicts itself in places. Certainly it is a different type of subject–the individual unconscious and emotion as opposed to social networking and business–and one that demands a different approach. Gladwell himself says “There are a lot of books that tackle broad themes…this is not one of them” (_Tipping Point_ was). In the small arena of unconscious thought, he explores two main areas that on first glance contradict each other. First Gladwell argues that our instinctual impressions can be trained to give us insight beyond what our intellect allows. Next he points out that those same instinctual impressions can easily lead us astray and exacerbate our prejudices and emotional biases. So which is it?

Both–although the balance between the two approaches is mostly ignored. Gladwell lays out the principles of _Blink_ on pages 14-15: Snap judgments can be as good as deliberate decisions; you can learn when to listen to them and when to ignore them; and you can educate and control them for when you do listen. The first and third of the principles are explored in great depth, but the second doesn’t get any attention. That’s a shame, because all his examples hint at the possibility of codifying which decisions should be “blinked” and which should be thought out traditionally.

The one main conclusion Gladwell draws is that if you do “blink” a decision, you’d better have experience. The stories consistently show that if you have practice making snap judgments, you make them better. You can learn traits of a field to improve just in that area (reading facial expressions is one such example), but nothing substitutes for experience. So build your own or hire someone who has it, and then you can “blink” well, your products can “blink” well, and you’ll know to keep your eyes open when you’re not “blinking”.

## Notes

5 Thomas Hoving, art critic, always makes a note of the first word that comes to mind upon seeing a work of art; he often asks his assistant to hide art so he’ll be truly surprised upon seeing it (253).

6 Interesting implication that some people, near-“heros”, can tell what mortals, even smart ones, cannot–he tempers this later by explaining that it is only their experience that sets them apart.

13 Why we are reluctant to trust even experts’ snap judgements: “We live in a world that assumes that the quality of a decision is directly related to the time and effort that went into making it.” Raymond Loewy’s one-minute design for Lucky Strike comes to mind.

14-15 Principles of _Blink_

1. “Decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately.”

2. “It is possible to learn when to listen to [your snap judgment] and when to be wary of it.”

3. “Our snap judgments and first impressions can be educated and controlled.” (section starting p. 237)

30 “In negative sentiment override mode (when people are emotional such that neutral things are perceived as negative), people draw lasting conclusions about each other.” – why it’s important to never go to bed angry; and to stop arguing when you get emotional. 94% of couples who begin trending toward negative sentiment override mode continue going down; it’s a self-perpetuating cycle.

32 Contempt is the most dangerous element to have in a relationship; it is present and shows itself without you even knowing you feel it. So what is the opposite of contempt, the thing most able to strengthen a relationship? Grace? Love? Charity? Worship? Selflessness?

33 Contempt is trying to put the other person on a lower plane than you, so you don’t view them as an equal. So the opposite would be elevating them; worship; obedience.

37 A person’s bedroom contains incredible amounts of information about them; should we insist on job applicants submitting a picture of their bedrooms instead of their resumes then? It’s what you _do_, not what you _say_!

1. Identity claims – diplomas, trophies

2. Behavioral residue – inadvertent clues: dirty laundry, alphabetized CD collection

3. Thoughts and feelings regulators – decorations, scented candles

39 If videotaping is the most powerful way to show people how they communicate, should we videotape meetings, relationship talks, and make the people watch them? With training/direction, it could help people notice the clues to working together better by “coming at the issue sideways.” (like the movie _Sideways_?)

53 _Priming_ – feeding people information or experiences that make them feel a certain way. An experiment where people read words associated with old people and then walked more slowly down the hallway leaving the experiment than they had walked toward it (John Bargh).

55 You can prime manners: people primed to be polite almost never interrupted a busy experimenter to let them leave; primed to be rude, they all did.

56 You can prime intellectualism: people thinking about being a professor did 12% better on Trivial Pursuit questions than those thinking about soccer hooligans. Palo Alto parents would pay dearly for those increases.

56 You can prime expectations and achievement: making people put down their race on a questionnaire caused African-American students to do only half as well on GRE questions than those not asked their race. Schools and companies concerned about getting the best applicants _and_ diversity should save their race questions until after the interview/application is done.

58 Just as the questions about old people make people act old, in most situations we just want to “fit in”. The key to acheivement, then, is to surround yourself with desirable things, so you want to “fit in” to a desirable place! We get what we expect…it’s why we look at where we want a line to end before we draw it! (on planning, and why it’s important but plans are useless; on exceptional people, who put themselves in places where they can do exceptional things)

70 People discovered solutions to problems when simply their unconscious picked them up (seeing that a rope could swing hinted to them that they could move it to accomplish their goal). Are there unconscious hinting tools? All that exist are IDEOs conscious inspiration cards…such a tool could be just a stream of “stuff happening”…like _The Way Things Go_? (video)

71 The limits of online textual learning? Benefits of video? “We learn by example and by direct experience because there are real limits to the adequacy of verbal instruction.”

85 You are what you eat – “The giant computer that is our subconscious silently crunches all the data it can from the experiences we’ve had, the people we’ve met, the lessons we’ve learned, the books we’ve read, the movies we’ve seen, and so on, and it forms an opinion.” More reason to tailor your environment carefully (like p.58)

87 The Warren Harding Error – 58% of Fortune 500 CEOs are 6 feet or taller; almost 33% are 6’2″+. Only 14.5% of American men are over 6 feet, only 4% 6’2″+. All right! (I’m 6’7″)

88 An inch of height is worth, on average, $789/year in salary. Why am I entering the meritocracy of the creative industry again? I’m giving up a lot of free money in the “business” world…I’m sure it still works for me. I’m _really_ tall…

97 We can change our instincts “by changing the experiences that comprise those impressions”. It’s what you _do_, not what you think: for racism, “it requires that you change your life so that you are exposed to minorities on a regular basis and become comfortable with them and familiar with the best of their culture.” Reminds me of Tom Peters’ quote, “You are your calendar”.

101 Stay in “training mode”; even in the midst of battle, soldiers do training exercises. Reminds me of NORBA racers complaining of losing fitness during the season because they were racing so much and not training. Always train, even when you’re busy “competing”.

107 Shout-out to Gary Klein’s book _Sources of Power_, “one of the classic works on decision making.” One conclusion is that experts only consider the most important factors, never all the factors.

114 Sports is instinct honed by experience; have the skills to pay the bills: “[Basketball’s spontaneous decisions are] possible only when everyone first engages in hours of highly repetitive and structured practice…and agrees to play a carefully defined role on the court.” Freedom through discipline and obedience (also Psalm 119:44, 45) Freedom to act is the important freedom, not freedom from rules.

116 Improv to “improve” your creativity; the “always say yes” rule in improv comedy means avoiding negativity and opening yourself to new direction in the scene. Similar actions in business can mean new directions for solutions. Say yes to things you’d normally deny – “They accept all offers made–which is something no ‘normal’ person would do.” – Keith Johnstone, improv pioneer

119 “Allowing people to operate without having to explain themselves constantly turns out to be like the rule of agreement in improv. It enables rapid cognition.” Often we don’t have the vocabulary to explain our decisions, but that doesn’t mean they are invalid (Aeron chair example later).

141 Lessons from the car lot

1. “Truly successful decision making relies on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking.” – know when to use snap judgment and when to refrain

2. “In good decision making, frugality matters” – reduce a problem to its simplest elements; “take things off the table” (Gladwell at Stanford); Gary Klein’s _Sources of Power_ observation (p.107)

1. Gladwell says “less is more”; Milton Glaser says “just enough is more”. Simplicity isn’t the answer, but relevance is.

142 Marketers and product developers must be driven by the desired action, not the possibilities.

1. 30% of people with 6 jam choices bought some; only 3% of those with 24 jam choices bought any.

2. Why functional specs are bad: they are driven by possibilities, not desired actions (which can only be discovered through prototyping and testing)

166 Why Coke shouldn’t have worried so much about Pepsi’s blind taste test wins: “Because in the real world, no one ever drinks Coca-Cola blind. We transfer to our sensation of the Coca-Cola taste all of the unconscious associations we have of the brand, the image, the can…” Judging things outside of their context will give you a false impression every time.

173 Why the Aeron chair had trouble getting accepted: “People reporting their first impressions misinterpreted their own feelings. They said they hated it. But what they really meant was that the chair was so new and unusual that they weren’t used to it.” p. 174: “Maybe the word ‘ugly’ was just a proxy for ‘different’.” – Bill Dowell

173 Customers must be able to imagine a future with a product: “[Customers] don’t have any history with it, and it’s hard for them to imagine a future with it, especially if it’s something very different.” – Bill Dowell. All radical innovations (the only ones I’m interested in being a part of) must demonstrate their future viability to consumers, through marketing or design.

179 Experts aren’t geniuses–“The gift of their expertise is that it allows them to have a much better understanding of what goes on behind the locked door of their unconscious…it is really only experts who are able to reliably account for their reactions.” And when non-experts _are_ asked to account for their reactions, it changes them (p.173).

206 Our facial expressions not only reflect our feelings, they _create_ our feelings. Restricting expressions restricts emotion, causing expressions, even forcing them, creates emotion.

233 The only thing that helped people avoid prejudiced reactions in forced half-second decisions was allowing them a bit more time to respond. Snap judgments are fast, but not instant.

239 People can get better at “mind-reading” with the right direction; Paul Ekman has a [training tape](http://www.paulekman.com/training_cds.php) that helps people do it in just 35 minutes. How can I see that tape?

252 The goal: “To make a proper snap judgment”

253 The method: “If we can control the environment in which rapid cognition takes place, then we can control rapid cognition.”

254 The result: “We take charge of the first two seconds”

Web Site Usability

The first book read from my [book binge](book-binge-2004), and the only one related to my current job, Web Site Usability seems at first glance to be an obsolete volume on web design. Published in 1997, before I even knew how to use the web, it uses example sites that are obviously dated and possess primitive technology. I was beginning to think my first book from the stack was a dud.

But while the specific examples were out of date, the methodology used to test the sites is as valid as ever. The most difficult part about web design is finding out what the site’s users want to find out. [Spool & Co](http://uie.com) break web tasks down into four main areas, each of which can still be used to determine site content and navigation in today’s sites:

1. Simple Fact: What is the fax number for the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce?

2. Judgment: Would stock funds be a good investment for your aunt’s retirement?

3. Comparison of Facts: Which wristwatch at the Disney Store is the least expensive?

4. Comparison of Judgment: What’s the best new convertible under $20,000?

The interesting thing about Spool’s version of web usability is that it is essentially the same as _findability_, something that Google has made largely a thing of the past. Now, to find information online, users will often start at Google and use its search to bypass local site navigation.

Spool’s observations about widget preferences (and irritants) are more lasting. These were gathered by observing the user’s facial and verbal reactions to site elements, and through a series of questionnaires given during and after the tests. As expected, spinning graphics and image links did poorly, and well-written text links did well, both things we now take for granted thanks to the success of Google’s AdWords and ad-blocking software. If designers had taken Spool’s advice starting in 1997, however, they could have had a 6-year head start on everyone else. That gives even more credibility to the authors’ testing methods, which can still be used to see _tomorrow’s_ web trends.

Book Binge 2004

[](http://ryskamp.org/misc/book-binge.jpg)

I went a little nuts at the used book store today, finally took a chunk out of my gigantic [Amazon wishlist](http://ryskamp.org/brain/wishlist-print), and simultaneously assured myself that no, I will never finish my unread books pile.

New on the stack are:

1. [Liar’s Poker](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0140143459/bobdesigns-20/), Michael Lewis

2. [Sphere](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0345353145/bobdesigns-20/), Michael Crichton

3. [Atlas Shrugged](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0451191145/bobdesigns-20/), Ayn Rand

4. [The Stranger](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0679720200/bobdesigns-20/), Albert Camus

5. [The Dharma Bums](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0140042520/bobdesigns-20/), Jack Kerouac

6. [The Mind of a Mnemonist](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0674576225/bobdesigns-20/), AR Luria

7. [Coercion](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/157322829X/bobdesigns-20/), Douglas Rushkoff

8. [The Gift](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0394715195/bobdesigns-20/), Lewis Hyde

9. [The Circle of Innovation](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0679757651/bobdesigns-20/), Tom Peters

10. [The Trial](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0805209999/bobdesigns-20/), Franz Kafka

11. [Autobiography](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0807059099/bobdesigns-20/), Mohandas Gandhi

12. [Bobos in Paradise](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0684853787/bobdesigns-20/), David Brooks

13. [Metaphors We Live By](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0226468011/bobdesigns-20/), George Lakoff

14. [McLuhan for Beginners](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0863162312/bobdesigns-20/)

15. [Web Site Usability](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/155860569X/bobdesigns-20/), Jared Spool – [my review](http://ryskamp.org/brain/books/web-site-usability)

16. [The Art of Happiness](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1573221112/bobdesigns-20/), The Dalai Lama

17. [Lila](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0553299611/bobdesigns-20/), Robert Pirsig

18. [Skipping Towards Gommorah](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0525946756/bobdesigns-20/), Dan Savage

19. [Why We Buy](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0684849135/bobdesigns-20/), Paco Underhill

20. [Three Scientists and Their Gods](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060972572/bobdesigns-20/), Robert Wright

21. [The Clustered World](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0316929204/bobdesigns-20/), Michael J. Weiss

I’m not sure yet how to approach this stack, but am open to suggestions. A little bit each day? Which one first? Any not worth the time? Take a week off of work and read nonstop? I’d love to finish them, but it will take some serious work.

I’ll annotate this list soon with more detail on the books and why I’m interested in them. For now, it should keep me sufficiently accountable to get started.

Prey

Prey is the first fiction book I’ve read in a while; a welcome change from having to take notes on every page of similarly-themed scientific works. It explores a nanotechnological disaster, with self-replicating machines working as swarms to overwhelm their creators. Crichton, as always, has done his homework on this one, with several pages of references contained in the back of the book.

Read More »

Weird Ideas That Work

By Robert Sutton, MS&E professor at Stanford. Talks about how many great ideas are surprising and even counterintuitive.

The Experience Economy

A book I talk about incessantly but have yet to read and have finally read. The progression of the economy: Commodity -> Product -> Service -> Experience -> Transformation.

We are currently transitioning from service to experience; I am interested in designing for transformations.