Tag: design

Texts from School

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My daughter’s high school (where I teach) has a new software program this year called Parent Square. It’s an app/service that allows school messages to be delivered more consistently, more immediately, and (unfortunately) more often.

During our training meeting where the administration sung the app’s praises I couldn’t help but think like an economist: oh this is too easy.

We all want to be informed parents. Or do we? Do parents want to know everything going on their children’s lives?

Regardless of if we want it (I don’t think we should) – we can’t!

Around the same time as my frustration with so many notifications, Kris Abdelmessih was asked about how to be a trader. He gives helpful advice. He’s a great writer, a good dad, super smart, and kind online. But part of kindness is honesty, he wrote:

“It’s gonna sound maybe harsh, but I tend to think that if you’re gonna figure it out, you just kind of are. You’re gonna find what to read; you’re gonna find the right things. And it’s like, if you’re unable to do that meta work, you’re just not cut out for it.”

Don’t bring information to a design fight. Want to change behaviors? Make it easier to people to take actions. Want to not change behaviors? Give people (more) information about the world. The ones who want it will get it.

Alcoholic Design

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“Catherine (a former alcoholic) put the kettle on and, while waiting, scrubbed at a stain on the kitchen counter. There was always something. Not long ago, she’d imagined herself out of Slough House for good, and the life she’s led during those few months had been serviceable enough: evenings had followed afternoons had followed mornings, and during none of them had she drunk. But they weighed heavy. There are worse things an alcoholic can have on her hands than time, but not many.”

From London Rules by Mick Herron.

This is my favorite current series (even more than Reacher). The Apple TV show is great.

Even though London is foreign and there are many references I don’t get, Herron’s created wonderful characters including Catherine. If you’ve found a recent favorite, let me know!

Aldi Why

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Around here we live good design. Like paths thru the woods, the more familiar and less onerous the path, the more likely we are to use it.

This is the new Aldi parking lot near my house. It’s a former Winn-Dixie grocery store. The parking lot is huge and further from the store than typical for an Aldi store.

It shows the contrast between an original design and not.

And contrast highlights choices and trade offs.

Most of the time we plug along.

Most of the time we see life as it is.

But sometimes we notice contrast and ask, why is it that way?

Happy Monday.

The 9th Best College Town

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In his review of College Towns, Ray Delahanty (aka CityNerd) combines the walk, bike, and transport scores along with census data to score college towns.

Places score well (highly) on good urbanism, design, walkability, pedestrian streets and so on.

Corvallis Oregon ranks ninth, thanks to high bike use based on census data.

But, “it’s a little puzzling because the bike infrastructure isn’t exactly world class which goes to show how important culture and habit are for transportation choices“.

There’s a beauty to good design. We love design. It’s satisfying. It feels like we’re doing something.

But it’s not the root level.

Design is superficial. It’s shines. There’s polish.

Done well, design relies on points of friction, human needs, and feelings of belonging (like identity). Design is on culture and habit. Design must align with basic issues.

Airport tradeoffs

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Every ten minutes someone spends in security reduces spending by 30%. The WSJ video goes on to explain how airports are redesigning to include more commercial spaces.

But what I really enjoyed about this video is the emphasis on trade-offs.

Airports have to manage a whole bunch of things. Safety and security. Movement of giant entities and human beings. Navigation by experienced and inexperienced users. There’s a lot!

Which means there are choices to be made. Denver International Airport has three island concourses. This is great for planes. But not as great for passengers. How aesthetically pleasing can an airport be (which makes people feel better) relative to how efficient so that everything operates more quickly (which also makes people feel better). Don’t forget, it’s all about feelings.

Jobs Theory requires a laser-like look at the tradeoffs. Classically Bob Moesta asks: why do I want a hot dog and when do I want a steak dinner? Those answers are the first step along the path to what destination: the tradeoffs being made.

Don’t hire a noun for a verb’s job.

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Related: Don’t bring an educational solution to a design fight.

Years ago I wanted to learn to play the guitar (this actually happened twice). I thought the first step was to get a guitar. The actual first step was to develop a practice habit.

We mess this up because nouns are easy, one-time, magic wand solutions.

It’s simpler to buy a spin bike than to spin.

It’s faster to to book a vacation than to mend a relationship.

It’s quicker to quit a job than figure out what you really want.

So we employ nouns. And when the nouns don’t work, we fire them thinking we hired the wrong one without considering it was the wrong type. It’s not the Dave Ramsey finance book that I need, it’s the Morgan House one!

If it’s a verb’s job – hire a verb.

It will be harder. It will take longer. It will “feel” less.

But if it’s a verb’s job – hire a verb.

Outlive (book advice)

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My thoughts of Outlive by Peter Attia revolve around two 80/20 ideas.

First, 80% of health outcomes derive from an absence. Don’t smoke. Don’t be overweight. Don’t under sleep. Don’t be sedentary. Avoid environmental contaminants. Avoid sunburns. Regardless of what someone does do, if they don’t do those things their health will mostly be fine.

Then 80% of the remaining 20% is about what people do do. My rough prioritization:

  1. Exercise, make it easy. Do enjoyable things. Do accessible things. Design it!
  2. Sleep better. Put the phone away through design choices.
  3. Continue the birthday cake diet along with tasty vegetarian foods.
  4. Poop in a box. It’s relatively costless and early prevention of colon cancer seems to matter.
  5. Avoid sunburns, especially in Florida!

To be accurate rather than precise the thinking looks like this:

0-80% of the effect is from avoiding the really bad things.

81-96% of the effect is from doing the basic good things: get stronger, eat better and less, sleep well.

97-99.9% of the effect is from optimization: finding spring water, taking metformin, and so on.

But, being a loss averse human being I don’t do any of the optimization. The chance it helps in a meaningful way is so small compared to the chance it mucks things up.

There are no facts, only feelings

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The stickiest idea from How Minds Change by David McRaney (and I hope I’m understanding this correctly) is that idea that we don’t actually know anything. We only have feelings.

There are fifty states in America. Cook chicken to an internal temperature of 165 degrees. Increase your weekly running mileage by 10%, or risk injury.

These are all things I used to consider facts. Now, I don’t know.

According to McRaney, there’s a subconscious level. On this level are our feelings. We don’t know about states, cooking temperatures, or running programs – we only feel what is right. We evolved (using memes) to survive. A crucial piece of survival is group membership. Status games are a feature, not a bug.

So what we think about facts, rooted in our subconscious, is the need for group membership. We believe in the number of states, in the temperature of chicken, and the weekly mileage rule of thumb because they let us belong.

Don’t bring an educational solution to a design fight fits this theory. To change people’s minds you have to change their feelings. And to change their feelings you have to understand their group survival dynamics – which operate on the subconscious level. Design works because it defaults to group survival. Things are this way because people like us to things like this.

“We are a tribeless nation hungry for tribes,” opens Wright Thompson in his book, Pappyland. Much of McRaney’s book, How Minds Change has this thread too. We want to feel connected. And that wanting is subconscious.

Clear Thinking (book review)

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Comparison is the thief of joy, this is how Shane Parish closes his book, Clear Thinking.

But it’s how he should have started it.

Maybe that’s another book, but we have to want the right things first. What’s important?

My gripe is that this book was not a daily devotional. It could’ve started with wanting the big things , enforce that each day, and given specific tactics, ideas, and questions. 

We want actions, but what are we acting towards?

Comparison is the thief of joy. We have to be careful about our wants. It is easy to want the wrong things. Many celebrities have noted that the downside of fame – the things we don’t see! – do not balance the upside.

And this is where the book could have started. Making sure we use clear thinking on the important things. 

It’s a good book, even though it isn’t a daily devotional. It’s broken down into two big ideas.

First, do we have the right mindset. Does someone have the right person on their shoulder, whispering in their ear? Do they have the right feelings in their heart? Do they have the norms, customs, culture, habits, in their life that leave them to the things they want?

The ways we act. The things we say. How we compose emails. How quickly we respond to text messages: and with what emojis. That’s how our norms. It’s the slope of our line (y=mx+b). There’s only so much we can do, but we need to have something helpful there.

Second, the systems we can design around our mindset. We aren’t always going to be humble, or getting after it, or on top of our game. In those situations, we rely on the systems we design around us.

The four enemies we face are emotion, ego, social pressure, and inertia. These are the enemies that rise up and whisper to our mindset. They are louder than the normal voices in our head. They steal our heart, they infiltrate our culture.

What may look like discipline often involves a carefully created environment to encourage certain behaviors. – Shane Parrish

The good news is, these enemies are not that strong. For example, Shane writes that it is easier to go to the gym seven days a week than three. Objectively this doesn’t make sense, but it uses the principle of a inertia to our advantage.

A tactic to avoid the social enemy is to have personal rules. I don’t drink on Thursday nights. I always sleep on it before signing a deal.

The influence of monger, the stoics, and the many others of Shane‘s parish run through this book. So much of it is about avoiding mistakes. It’s about avoiding these enemies, not through choice, but having good design and the right mindset.

The book also includes a section on decisions in action. It offers incredibly helpful specific questions for decision-makers to ask. I won’t spoil them here.