Posts tagged “reward”

ChittahChattah Quickies

Give And Take: How The Rule Of Reciprocation Binds Us [NPR] – While “you can’t control other people” is a constant life lessons, it’s interesting to consider what science teaches about how we can influence and induce behaviors in others.

Kunz was a sociologist at Brigham Young University. Earlier that year he’d decided to do an experiment to see what would happen if he sent Christmas cards to total strangers. And so he went out and collected directories for some nearby towns and picked out around 600 names. “I started out at a random number and then skipped so many and got to the next one,” he says. To these 600 strangers, Kunz sent his Christmas greetings: handwritten notes or a card with a photo of him and his family. And then Kunz waited to see what would happen. About five days later, responses started filtering back – slowly at first and then more, until eventually they were coming 12, 15 at a time. Eventually Kunz got more than 200 replies. “I was really surprised by how many responses there were,” he says. “And I was surprised by the number of letters that were written, some of them three, four pages long…We got cards for maybe 15 years,” he says.

Tapping citizen-scientists for a novel gut check [SF Chron] – While we always come up with new methods to get people involved in data collecting for research, this was something I hadn’t really thought of before. By the way, the notion of the microbiome is a fascinating one that seems to be continually gaining traction. Although we haven’t had the guts (if you will) to actually do it, we declared we would stop using “ecosystem” in client presentations and start talking about “microbiomes.”

Now for a fee – $69 and up – and a stool sample, the curious can find out just what’s living in their intestines and take part in one of the hottest new fields in science. The American Gut Project, aims to enroll 10,000 people – and a bunch of their dogs and cats too – from around the country. uBiome, separately aims to enroll nearly 2,000 people from anywhere in the world. Scott Jackisch, a computer consultant in Oakland, Calif., ran across American Gut while exploring the science behind different diets, and signed up last week. He’s read with fascination earlier microbiome research: “Most of the genetic matter in what we consider ourselves is not human, and that’s crazy. I wanted to learn about that.” Testing a single stool sample costs $99 in that project, but he picked a three-sample deal for $260 to compare his own bacterial makeup after eating various foods. “I want to be extra, extra well,” said Jackisch, 42. Differing gut microbes may be the reason “there’s no one magic bullet of diet that people can eat and be healthy.”

“We don’t just want people that have a gut-ache. We want couch potatoes. We want babies. We want vegans. We want athletes. We want anybody and everybody because we need that complete diversity,” added American Gut co-founder Jeff Leach, an anthropologist.

White points mean prizes for safe driving in Dubai [The National] – Is our preference for carrot or stick culturally constructed? Schemes that give students rewards for good grades are often seen as “bribery” and decried for encouraging the wrong thing. Yet inverting our punishment-based driving-record approach seems so kindly. I suppose its efficacy needs to be proven, whether in Dubai or Dubuque.

Motorists who go the longest period without a traffic violation will be given priority in a new police system that rewards good driving with prizes, including a car. Under the white points system, drivers of vehicles registered in Dubai are awarded a point for each month without traffic offences or Salik toll-road fines. Drivers who go 12 months without any violations will be eligible for prizes worth a minimum of Dh500 each. Dubai Police say there will be between 250 to 500 prizes. The head of Dubai Police traffic department, Maj Gen Mohammed Saif Al Zaffin, said today that if there were more good drivers than prizes then those with the longest standing clean sheets would be given priority. “We have a specific budget for the prizes so there might need to be a selection process based on the number of people who will be eligible for a prize as part of the scheme,” Maj Gen Al Zaffin said.

ChittahChattah Quickies

  • [from julienorvaisas] Awful elevator panel design [Boing Boing] – [Another entrant in what is becoming a theme on this blog: how-complicated-does-it-have-to-be-to-go-up-and-down?] Robyn Miller took this photo of a poorly designed elevator control panel.
  • [from julienorvaisas] David Hockney’s instant iPad art [BBC News] – [Now that's a convincing interface and experience.] "Who wouldn't want one? Picasso or Van Gogh would have snapped one up," the artist David Hockney tells me at the opening of his latest show in Paris called Fleurs Fraiches, or Fresh Flowers. "It's a real privilege to make these works of art through digital tools which mean you don't have the bother of water, paints, and the chore of clearing things away," he says. "You know sometimes I get so carried away, I wipe my fingers at the end thinking that I've got paint on them."
  • [from steve_portigal] Doonesbury Turns 40 [Rolling Stone] – [One of the most surprising bits in this Chip Kidd interview with Garry Trudeau. As consumers, we constantly make the mistake of conflating the artist with their art, the producer with their product. We know the material – sometimes very well – and so we really think we know the maker equally well. Trudeau reminds us, once again, that in least one critical way, we don't] I'm never happier than when I'm not working. The strip is a job ­ that's why I take money for it. It's a job I'm passionate about, but it's a job I totally leave in the studio when I walk out of here, unless I'm late and I have to work at home. I never think of the strip unless I'm compelled to.

ChittahChattah Quickies

  • [from steve_portigal] Rent a White Guy [The Atlantic] – And so I became a fake businessman in China, an often lucrative gig for underworked expatriates here. One friend, an American who works in film, was paid to represent a Canadian company and give a speech espousing a low-carbon future. Another was flown to Shanghai to act as a seasonal-gifts buyer. Recruiting fake businessmen is one way to create the image—particularly, the image of connection—that Chinese companies crave. My Chinese-language tutor, at first aghast about how much we were getting paid, put it this way: “Having foreigners in nice suits gives the company face.” We were supposedly representing a California-based company that was building a facility in Dongying. Our responsibilities would include making daily trips to the construction site, attending a ribbon-cutting ceremony, and hobnobbing. During the ceremony, one of us would have to give a speech as the company’s director. That duty fell to my friend Ernie. His business cards had already been made. (via @Kottke)
  • [from julienorvaisas] Hey Facebook! Here’s your privacy redesign [Fortune.com] – [The community is now literally begging Facebook to fix this issue. Free design!] We asked several leading user experience designers how they'd overhaul the social network's obtuse privacy settings interface if given the chance. Here, in their own words, are their innovative solutions.
  • [from steve_portigal] For Forgetful, Cash Helps the Medicine Go Down [NYTimes.com] – [The challenge of marketing, design & other forms of corporate persuasion is revealed when you see that people need incentive/motivation to take medication] One-third to one-half of all patients do not take medication as prescribed, and up to one-quarter never fill prescriptions at all, experts say. Such lapses fuel more than $100 billion dollars in health costs annually because those patients often get sicker. Now, a controversial, and seemingly counterintuitive, effort to tackle the problem is gaining ground: paying people money to take medicine or to comply with prescribed treatment. The idea, which is being embraced by doctors, pharmacy companies, insurers and researchers, is that paying modest financial incentives up front can save much larger costs of hospitalization…Although “economically irrational,” Dr. Corrigan said, small sums might work better than bigger ones because otherwise patients might think, “ ‘I’m only doing this for the money,’ and it would undermine treatment.”
  • [from steve_portigal] Creativity thrives in Pixar’s animated workplace [SF Chronicle] – At another company, the employee in Payne's position might be a feared corporate rules-enforcer – the guy who tells you not to put tack holes in the plaster or forbids you from painting over the white walls next to your cubicle. But the architect and 14-year Pixar veteran embraces the madness. Among the more creative additions on the campus: One animator built a bookcase with a secret panel – which opens up into a speakeasy-style sitting area with a card table, bar and security monitor. Other employees work in modified Tuff Sheds, tricked out to look like little houses with front porches and chandeliers. "Sometimes I just have to let go," Payne says with an amused sigh, as he walks into a newer building with a high ceiling – where someone has interrupted the clean sightlines with a wooden loft. A couch and a mini-refrigerator are balanced 10 feet above the floor. [Did a mini-ethnography of Pixar a few years ago and the cultural factors around creativity and community were outstanding]

Check out checking out

dsc03163.JPG

I was thinking about how to describe this mess of a Safeway receipt when I read a post on Niblettes that mentioned “brand diarrhea.”

[as I’ve said, I won’t call the person Niblettes, I’ll call him John, but I will call the blog Niblettes. This is my brand aphasia. Or silliness threshold]

They’ve jammed every form of bonus/status/ad/info at the end. For this purchase, the checkout dude even stopped afterwards and recited a lengthy speech referring me to the information located on the bottom of the receipt that I should check out if I had time. His tone suggested there was maybe something special there that I hadn’t noticed, something specific they would want me to find. But what?

He then called me Mr. Portugal and also gave me $100 cash-back, even though I had only paid for $80. I returned the other $20.

I was pretty intrigued by the discounted gas purchase available. But there’s no info on where to get that! Or any info about how to find out where to get that! Nothing on the back, either. Which makes it basically a useless offer if we can’t redeem it!

I await that heavenly day when I earn my free deli sandwich!

Series

About Steve