Last night, Capital One hosted an event at their new San Francisco labs. It was a packed house, with food and drink, discussion, networking, and two presentations. Catherine Courage gave – as always – an exciting and encouraging talk on storytelling. Jakob Nielsen talked about, I guess, testing, though he used the phrase “user research” extensively.

Anyway, during the Q&A, Nielsen said “Most people are stupid.” He didn’t misspeak, he said this and he meant it. In his example, if you tested a product with someone who knew the product, they would have a certain performance. If you got someone in off the street “…he would be stupid. [pause, chuckle] Most people are stupid.”

I posted about this on Twitter and got reactions from surprise to an utter lack of surprise, given the source. I don’t know about that. I do think that if you think people are stupid, you shouldn’t be working in user experience and you shouldn’t be given a platform to hold forth. Please don’t invite Jakob Nielsen to speak at your event. This is toxicity we don’t need.

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This is bizarre. As if food isn’t expensive enough, Kellogg’s is encouraging kids to do (dumb-ass) crafts projects with Froot Loops. On the back of a box are detailed instructions for Rainbow Layer Art (crush a bunch of Froot Loops and layer each color in a jar) and Tambourine Shaker (put Froot Loops between paper plates).

As my mother would say “Ants will come!” You’re going to put highly-sugared cereal into toys that will sit in bedrooms and livingrooms and playrooms? One is made of crumbs (guaranteed to leak) and the other involves percussing individual Loops obviously creating more crumbs (which will also leak). You’ll have Froot crap all over your house and an immediate infestation of ants, not to mention sticky galore.

The idea is so head-shakingly inappropriate. Why are they suggesting that their cereal (nutrition, sustenance, expensive) is in itself a plaything? Doesn’t that just send every wrong signal to a kid? People are starving in Biafra and you are wasting your breakfast cereal as decoration? It reveals how non-food companies like Kellogg’s really think their product is. It’s just a substance to be manufactured and distributed. It’s not an edible commodity, it’s just some coloring that can be chewed, put in a jar and displayed, or hey, made into a musical instrument. Floor wax or desert topping, anyone?

I mean, really.