Friday, March 28, 2014

Fashion and Consumer Preferences

Fashion is a difficult issue for marketers, because it seems entirely arbitrary and random, hence difficult to predict.   It's best know in the garment industry, in which manufacturers needed to predict the styles of clothing people would wish to purchase in the winter, which means it would be sold in the summer, which means it would need to be produced in the spring, which means it would need to be designed/selected the winter before - and predicting a year in advance where consumer tastes will be is no easy matter.

I got to thinking about fashion while reading on sociology and operations management - and while I haven't developed a prediction model that will solve the problem, I do think I've gained some insight into the issue - because fashion is a social behavior, which considers the way in which individuals have the option to follow the behavioral choices of others or to ignore the choices of others and make their own choice.   This is what evolves the way in which tasks are done, but in a way that can be adapted to fashion as well.

Evolution of Tasks

To begin, I'd like to set aside the psychological factors that motivate a person to adopt a behavior and focus exclusively on the praxeology of behavior.  Fundamentally, people consider a pattern of behavior because they expect that it will achieve a desired outcome, and they choose to adopt that pattern of behavior when they expect that the outcome is worth the cost and effort of performing that behavior, in comparison to other options they would forego or delay for the purpose of performing it.

In functional matters, such as the performance of a task to achieve a result, a behavior may be adopted because it improves the quality of the result or decreases the effort of achieving it - and when both quality and effort are impacted, they balance one against the other, albeit in an imperfect and arbitrary way (regardless of how much effort is put into the decision, there is always some degree of imperfection and arbitrariness).

In a leaderless environment, such as a workshop, a rational worker notices that another worker has a superior output or is expending less effort to accomplish a task, and imitates his behavior in hopes of achieving the same in his own work.   This makes perfect sense, but for three things:
  1. Leadership. There are few leaderless environments, and in organizing labor it is often a non-laboring observer (manager) who dictates the way work ought to be done, and the workers are not free to choose the most efficient and effective behaviors to accomplish a task.
  2. Rationale: Not all workers are rational, and many are quite irrational - they may cling to the security of an established behavior in spite of their observation that doing things differently would be better.   
  3. Subjectivity: Even when workers are rational, the notion of "quality" is nebulous at best, and the ways in which a different behavior improves the outcome may be in dispute.
These obstacles to functional quality and efficiency are even more pronounced in matters such as fashion - particularly because fashion is not about functionality at all.   Particularly in haut couture, the highest expression of fashion, whether an item is considered fashionable has nothing at all to do with whether it is suitable to any purpose - and in fact, couture may prefer a completely unusable or unsuitable item to be preferable simply because the person who adopts it is doing so for "higher" purposes than the functional need of the object.

The "Quality" of Fashion

Fashion is about esteem and the desire to be admired by others, or at the very least not to be ridiculed - there is no functional element to fashion, or at least functionality is optional, such that the most fashionable item may not be functional at all.  For example, a pair of shoes that makes a positive impression is not necessarily comfortable - and in fact many of the most fashionable shoes are uncomfortable, and they may be considered "fashionable" simply because they are not functional.

So where practical matters evolve in pursuit of functional qualities, fashion evolves in pursuit of non-functional qualities.   It is far easier to observe that one method or another of accomplishing a task is more efficient than it is to observe that one article of clothing is more impressive than another, and it is even difficult to understand the parameters by which "impressiveness" would be assessed.   One person decides that another person they see looks impressive and imitates their style, even though they may be unable to identify or articulate the reason they think it is worth imitating.

I'd like to return briefly to the three obstacles to functional quality that were mentioned previously:
  1. Leadership:  Fashion is not strictly leaderless, as some individuals lead fashion by virtue of their esteem - but even then, the most esteemed person may adopt a ridiculous fashion that others choose not to follow.   In that sense, some people have a sort of temporary influence, but not formal leadership.
  2. Rationale:  In the same way that workers cling stubbornly to familiar routines in spite of the manner in which new behaviors would be more efficient or effective, people cling to familiar fashions of a sense of comfort and safety with the known.
  3. Subjectivity:  Fashion is far more subjective than productive activity, because people have a wide array of opinions about what "looks good" or causes others to be impressed, and cannot observe the reaction of others until a new behavior has been adopted.
All three of these factors - a lack of control, the absence or reason, and the subjectivity of evaluation - make fashion a more wily pursuit than effectiveness.

I'd like to progress this meditation into considering the manner in which fashion and behavior evolve, but my sense is I've rattled on for quite a while and am not yet at the point where I have an acceptably plausible theory as to the manner in which evolution occurs.   I'll meditate on that further and post a follow-up.

Monday, March 24, 2014

Mindful of the Process

The Practicing Mind is one of those books that I wanted to quit reading with each page, but found myself returning to pick up where I left off.  While it's a completely unscientific self-help book, full of folksy wisdom and specious self-aggrandizing stories about its author, I found it nonetheless compelling because of the cognitive approach that the author was prescribing, and regard it as having significant potential for designing customer experiences.

The thrust of the author's argument is that people in the present day have a sense of constant dissatisfaction because we are ever focused on outcomes.   We want to rush to the finish line, have the fruits of our labor (without doing the labor if possible), and expect to be happy once we have what we wanted.   The problem is that the satisfaction of having something is short-lived and it's not long before we find something else to want, and repeat the process in an endless cycle: getting more and feeling less satisfied by it.

For the reader, the author's advice is to focus on the moment and take pleasure in the process - which has been said hundreds if not thousands of times before and his is just another voice repeating the same message that has been ignored every other time.  I tend to doubt there is any stunning new perspective in the pages of this book that will suddenly turn on a light for the reader and cause them to realize that their way of life, or of looking at life, likely needs to make an abrupt change.

At the same time, it's a good reminder of this shopworn wisdom, and one that I sense that is often neglected in the design of customer experiences.   That is to say that we build the shopping processes to escort the shopper as promptly as possible to the register.   We don't particularly care if the customers are happy with their purchases for long, and it's likely better for us if they are not because they will soon be back to purchase something else.  If their problems are solved or their goals are achieved, there's little chance of getting repeat business.   Or perhaps the author's cynicism about consumer culture has become contagious?

The more salient point the author makes is that the people who are the most happy in life are focused on the process of achieving their goals, and that the completion of an objective marks the end of a pleasant journey and a brief respite before setting off on the next one.   It's a warm and fuzzy kind of thought, but in terms of experience design, it seems to me that a shopping experience that provides a pleasant journey to the destination of a purchase is the entire point of retail.

Manufacturing, meanwhile, must focus on the satisfaction of the product - though it should also be considered as a journey of ownership rather than of acquisition, that begins with the purchase of the item and continues during the period of use, ending when the product has been totally consumed or has become completely worn-out from use.    But this is an entirely different journey - no less important and no less worth of attention, but different nonetheless.

And in that way I have the sense that this book is very closely related to what we do, or ought to be doing, in considering customer experiences.   We can take for granted that the purchase of the item will provide a level of satisfaction and relegate the period of ownership to another department, but we must still focus on the process of obtaining the item as a journey that should be intrinsically pleasant for the user - rather than an ordeal that must be suffered for the sake of accomplishing something else.

The methods by which the retail journey can be instilled with a sense of progress and moments of satisfaction is likely a much more intricate subject with a significant number of variations according to the idiosyncrasies of product, customer, and need - but it is a task to be undertaken with the right mindset.  And it's my sense that this fluffy little book could well be a good mood-setter for approaching the task from the proper perspective.

Friday, March 21, 2014

Anarchy in the Office

I heard an interesting alternative for managing human resources in a project execution environment that sounds like so much havering, but might actually be worthwhile to try as an experiment and perhaps refine into a more viable model.

The basic idea is that traditional management is threat-based: a person is in a position of authority because they have the ability to do harm to others, and his directives are backed by threat (termination of employment) and workers are coerced into complying with his orders for that reason alone - not because he is making sound decisions.

This seems a bit melodramatic, but it cannot be denied that it is always to some degree true.  The modern practice of management may pay lip-service to using logical persuasion and having empowered employees, but so long as the employee is threatened into following orders with which he disagrees, the element of coercion remains.

The proposed change was to do away with management structures altogether and create a network of truly empowered employees who have the ability to submit their ideas for solutions, the ability to persuade (without manipulation or coercion) other employees to assist, and the right of each employee to accept or reject invitations to involve themselves in projects.

There would be no reprisal for rejecting an invitation to work on an effort, and employees commitment to work on an effort could be withdrawn at will, such that if an idea was misrepresented or the project's scope changed, they could still walk away.

There would be no rank nor threat-based leadership.   The work of a team would be directed by the employee who proposed the idea.  In that way the "management" would be temporary rather than permanent, and people who had good ideas would regularly find themselves in leadership positions, while those who had bad ideas would not gather followers.

In a situation free of rank and threat, employees could determine which projects had merit and could benefit from their skills.   A bad idea would not get implemented because, presumably, its badness would be recognized and people would not lend their support to it.

This seems to make sense in expert environments, where workers contribute to developing solutions rather than merely executing orders.  A worker with the ability to develop a solution is more qualified to assess the viability of the solution than a manager who dictates by threat and has no subject-matter expertise.

All the same, I do not expect that a completely anarchic system is viable, as there are many issues that could arise without oversight.
  • Staff would flow to projects that seem interesting or glamorous, but  there are many necessary and even critical efforts that are not attractive.
  • Workers could use their "right to refuse" to shirk- to refuse all projects and goldbrick, or to do less than they are capable
  • Support would not necessarily be for the merit of the idea, but the popularity of the proposer - rather than a meritocracy, it would become a popularity contest.
  • Also related to popularity, an unpopular person with a good idea may not be able to attract followers to support the idea
  • There is also the problem of favoritism and cronyism, which would be pronounced in an environment where there is no formal authority to discourage these practices.  
  • There is no oversight to ensure that the people are matched to the jobs, such that a person could volunteer for work he is incapable of doing competently and could not be thrown off a project where he is useless or even obstructive
  • There is no oversight to ensure that an adequate number of people with the right skills are available at any given time - and in fact there would be skilled people who were idle because none of the teams happened to need his skill at the moment.
I'm likely clutching at straws - the entire model seems notional and assumes the best-case scenario in which a good idea is always recognized, workers are willing to apply themselves in earnest and adequately, resources of the right kind are available in adequate supply, and so on.   The premises of the anarchic office seem good and rather attractive, but there is likely much to be worked out to make the idea viable.

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Modes of Evaluation

Successful delivery of satisfactory customer experience has a critical dependency upon the degree to which the experience designed by the provider matches the experience received by the customer, and the overall satisfaction of the customer is generally an amalgam of the various touch-points he has with the brand in the course of his experience (shopping, purchasing, using, and disposal).

This seems straightforward enough until you consider the modes by which the customer assesses the experience he has received.  While there are at present many elements of customer experience that suffer from a lack of deliberate design, there are others that are deliberately designed, but the mode by which the designer expected the experience to be evaluated and the mode in which the customer actually did evaluate their experience are different.

The term “mode” is used because it is independent of the means, which would be the individual qualities by which the customer evaluates his experience.   The mode considers the method in which those qualities are assessed – so while it may be relatively simple to define the means by which satisfaction is achieved (meeting or exceeding expectations by comparison to expectations), the mode of evaluation can also be mismatched.

This is complicated by the fact that there is no single mode in which all customers evaluate experience – people have various preferences and they assess them in different ways at different times – but it is likely that achieving complete success depends on matching or at least accommodating the basic modalities of evaluation.    Said another way, I’m about to venture into a very abstract and conceptual mediation – and will likely leave the reader to his own devices in determining how this applies to the evaluation of various “real world” touch-points.


The binary mode of evaluation provides options by which an evaluator will consider the subject to fall into one or the other – the typical arrangement of black or white, A or B, and is or is-not, in which the evaluation chooses a single option and, in so doing, dismisses the other.   This mode can be seen in the traditional Greek philosophy or Socrates and Aristotle, and tends to predominate even to modern times – when someone insists that something is “either this or that” and must be evaluated to be one or the other.

The obvious flaw in the binary mode is the assumption that the two classifications defined are mutually exclusive and that no other classification exists.   To insist that something is black or white is to imply no shade of gray exists, which seems all the more foolish if you were to substitute any other two colors, such as stating everything must be evaluated as being blue or yellow.   What if it is a shade of green that is believed to be between blue and yellow?  Or what if it is red?   Such instances confound evaluation.

But more to the point, what occurs when a designer accepts a false dichotomy?   This will prevent him from accurately predicting the customer’s evaluation and, worse, being confident in pursuing options that seem sensible given his prediction, but are wholly inappropriate to the customer’s mode of evaluation.

Before leaving this, I should mention that the “binary” mode implies that there are just two options – and that there are also instances in which there are three or more to choose among.   This is similar to binary thinking in that the experience must be considered to be “in” or “out” of each option, and that being “in” one option means being “out” of all others.   Also, this leads to further confusion because there can be no fall back to “if it’s not one it’s the other” modes of conflict resolution.   But essentially, the problem of a multiple-choice mode is largely analogous to the binary mode.


The scalar mode of evaluation provides an improvement over the binary mode, in that it provides a wide range of options between the two diametrically opposed extremes, and likely requires the evaluator to first consider whether the options he has selected are in fact both mutually exclusive and diametrically opposed in order to establish them as opposites on a scale.

However, scalar evaluation also carries with it the same fundamental flaws as binary evaluation: it provides two options that are presumed to be opposed to one another.   In the analogy to color distinction, a scalar representation enables the evaluation of a hue as blue, yellow, or somewhere in between.  While this accommodates shades of green (albeit in a clumsy and inaccurate way) it still prevents the proper evaluation of red.

It also presumes a conflict between the options provided: to suggest that something is more blue requires the evaluator to also assess it to be less yellow – when in reality it might have more of both qualities.   It might be necessary to depart from the analogy of color to better describe that: consider the emotions of happiness and sadness, and the middle state of bittersweetness that occurs when an event has elements of both happiness and sadness.   But being more happy doesn’t make one less sad as the two can be similar in their intensity – e.g., an event can be both very happy and very sad, and the poignancy of each does not diminish that of the other.

It is also little better for the designer in terms of accepting a false dichotomy, as it restricts the possibilities to the two options and a range in between.   And again, he becomes confident that no other quality could be considered and boldly sets sail in the wrong direction entirely, which will not be discovered until the mismatch between his assumption and the customer’s actual mode of evaluation results in a rejection of the schema.


A dimensional mode of evaluation is the configuration of a matrix of two scalar evaluations, resulting in an evaluation along two different axes that determine a relative positioning of an event according to four qualities that are arranged as two diametrically opposed scales superimposed on one another.

For example, the blue-yellow scale is matrixed against a black-white scale to determine a shade of green that falls roughly into the quadrants of blue-black, blue-white, yellow-black, and yellow-white depending on its perception along each of the axes.

This is considered to be more informative than a scalar evaluation, but carries with it the same flaws as both the scalar and binary modes on which it is based.   But instead of making a single evaluation, the subject makes two separate evaluations to place it upon each of the two axes, which is confounding.   It is more likely that a general assessment is made first, as a single unit, which is then deconstructed to correspond to the axes of evaluation.

There can be some argument that such an evaluation gives the designer of an experience even greater latitude in his ability to make mistakes – to be correct about one axis but not the other, or even wrong about both, and to offer an experience that is horribly disjointed to the expectations and actual experience of the customer.  And when things go wrong, it becomes far more difficult to diagnose precisely which of the axial scales is to blame for the imprecision of his evaluation.


The multidimensional mode of evaluation is the ultimate extension of binary, scalar, and bidimensional modes – but “ultimate” only in the sense that it is indefinite in its ability to accommodate a number of scalar evaluations from three to infinity.   It seems highly likely that, in the normal course of events, multidimensionality is likely most representative of the manner in which most phenomena are naturally evaluated, and any lesser form is an attempt to simplify.

This simplification comes at the cost of accuracy, but is likely necessary for the sole purpose of discussion.   That is to say that a person experiences a sensation such as he does, and it is only in the course of describing this sensation to another person (in words) that he begins to determine the individual qualities of that sensation and alight them along a series of scales in order to communicate that sensation to another person.   And most people do this very badly.

For example, consider the way in which a person might describe the color of a specific individual’s skin. It may seem to represent a point on the red-yellow continuum that is tinged with green (the blue-yellow continuum) and of a given level of darkness (the black-white continuum) – but ultimately words fail them and they cannot provide a sufficiently accurate description, even in a multidimensional evaluation, that would allow the other person to accurately understand.   It is the color it is, and words fail to describe it sufficiently.

In addition to the difficulties of accuracy and the manner in which multiple scales confound both the tasks of definition and diagnosis, the multidimensional mode of evaluation leads to a highly complex analysis that a designer would struggle to accommodate, even given a dynamic and flexible mechanism for customizing the experience to each customer.

This is likely where the role of a live service provider becomes critical: because the number, manner, and degree of scalar evaluations is for all intents infinite, it requires real-time adaptation to understand the various scales and degrees to which a customer might communicate their expectations of an experience – in a way that only a human mind is able to perceive and adapt as the idiosyncrasies of customer and product collide.


Given these four modes of evaluation have been presented in increasing order of complexity, there is likely the sense that after reviewing the most complex of them that predictive models of evaluation for experience design may be impossible to derive – so it’s necessary to back up a bit, because this was not at all the intent of this meditation.

Given the inability to articulate the qualities of experience, the customer likely avoids the complexities by considering only two or three of the criteria he applies in evaluation, and may consider them in a binary rather than scalar mode.   Again, it is specific to the individual, product, and buying situation but does not entirely avoid prediction.

However, it does suggest that there are areas that may be simplified, but other areas in which a great deal more deliberation and flexibility is required to arrive at an approximation of the customer’s mode of evaluation in a specific instance – as well as a willingness to reconsider the model when an experience design fails to a significant degree.

And in the end, the critical factor is identifying both the qualities and the mode of their evaluation – and not merely the first without the second – that becomes critical to success in customer experience design.

Friday, March 14, 2014

The Death of False Advertising

The claim that social media will be the death of marketing has stuck in my mind for a while – it seemed exaggerated and melodramatic, but not altogether false.   It’s taken some time to sort through it, but I think I have separated the wheat from the chaff.

Primarily, the person who made this claim clearly does not understand what “marketing” encompasses – it’s far more than paid commercial promotion – and even social media is being used for marketing, so the claim that a tool will replace the very task for which it is used is entirely without logic or merit.

But I must concede that social media may be the death, or at least the near-extinction, of traditional advertising that is done to inform the public of the value of a product or brand, or to build the image of a brand or a company.   Arguably, that sort of advertising became pointless three decades ago – older generations may have believed that anything that they saw on television, including advertising, was true because they believed that the authorities would be proactive in preventing falsehood and disinformation - a publication or channel would not permit advertisers to deceive their audiences because it would harm the reputation of the channel to do so.  Younger generations have no such illusions, and recognize that channels are interested in advertising revenue and take no responsibility.  There are very few exceptions to this rule, and there is a suspicion that any channel that seems responsible has merely not yet been caught.

For all generations, word of mouth has always been more reliable than contrived posturing by those who stand to gain financial benefit for getting you to believe what they say.   That’s not to say word of mouth is infallible, as there are many people who enjoy manipulating others or being regarded as authoritative even when they haven’t a clue.   But relatively speaking, the solicited input of people who aren’t out to make money off of others is generally regarded to be less biased than the unsolicited input of those who are.   And social media, at least in regard to product mentions, is an explosion of first-person testimonials.

With that in mind, the kind of advertising that is meant to make the audience believe that a product, brand, or company is “good” in any regard has become largely pointless: consumers are sophisticated enough to recognize that firms attempt to give them a false impression in order to get into their wallets, and where the need is important or the amount of money is substantial they seek confirmation and are ready to doubt.

I would even go so far to say that social media is the death of a firm’s ability to make false claims about itself, to be the only voice anyone can hear, and to have no-one speak the truth about them.   And good riddance to that.

But at the same time, advertising will not completely die out.   An unfamiliar firm with an unfamiliar brand and perhaps even an unfamiliar product will find that no-one in social media is sharing information at all and advertising will be a way to start the conversation.  The message will be less about convincing the audience of your value and more about simply letting them know that your brand exists – in hopes that it will pique their curiosity enough that they will begin talking about it.

The rest of marketing will remain entirely relevant and necessary, and while social media may do much to inform virtually every marketing function, it does not have the ability to replace or even reduce these functions and may in fact increase them, as there will be more data to drive decisions about the product, service, and behavior of the firm in general.

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Lying for Fun and Profit

If you have ever wished that you had the ability to know when you are being lied to, you might consider.   As a student of rhetoric (I hold a master's) I have tuned that ability - not that I think I have flawless and infallible lie-detection abilities but my ability is likely better than most, and I find that people lie quite often and that most of them are very bad at it.   In fact, what most offends me these days is not that someone is lying to be but how poorly they construct their deceptions.   But back on point, the question that plagues me isn't if I am lied to or when, but the reason: why are people so prone to lying, so unnecessarily, so often, and about so many things?

This is not merely a topic of philosophy, but has significant practical concerns, particularly to the customer service profession.   To be truly successful, a person who wants to serve a customer must negotiate between two parties that lie to one another as a matter of course  - to eschew the lies their own employer wants to tell the customers to make them want products and to detect the lies those customers are telling to avoid being victimized.

Ideally, both parties would be honest with one another as a matter of course and consumer relationships would be more transparent and straightforward, but things are seldom thus.

People Lie to Get What They Don't Deserve

My sense is that this motivation covers a vast majority of lies in both commercial and noncommercial relationships: a person wants something from someone else and recognizes that they do not deserve it.

In noncommercial situations, "deserving" something is a matter of having certain qualities that make the other party inclined to provide what is wanted.   The liar recognizes this and attempts to deceive the benefactor into believing they meet the qualifications to get the reward.   This is as true of people who defraud charities to get benefits as it is of people who defraud one another to get love and friendship.

In commercial settings "deserving" is a matter of being willing to provide something of equal value in exchange for what is received.   The buyer gives an amount of money to a seller, the seller gives a product that delivers a benefit to a buyer, and the two are expected to be fair in the exchange.    (The same is true of the exchange of wage for effort in employment situations, but I will set that aside for now.)

In the instance of a transaction, the deception is temporary - and as soon as the transaction has been finalized, the deception ends - or more aptly, it begins to be revealed.   But in the larger context, a person expects to engage in multiple transactions over time, and must maintain the deception through multiple transactions, which his the reason people lie so constantly (and incidentally, that is where most liars fail because they cannot maintain the deception for the long run).

The Self-Aggrandizing Lie

The self-aggrandizing lie seems to fall outside of the principle of lying to obtain undeserved benefits.   People lie to others in order to gain esteem without having a clear or immediate objective in mind - they just crave, in a general sense, to be respected and admired by others and to have a sense of self-importance.   Coincidentally, they also feel unworthy of respect and admiration - which is true less often than many seem to accept.

In most instances, the liar is merely deceiving himself.   Other people will play along with a self-aggrandizing lie because it is of no consequence: there's really no harm in entertaining other peoples' delusions of grandeur and giving them a little undeserved respect out of a charity, and it would be at least a bit hypocritical of us to do so because we are each at least a little guilty of thinking too much of ourselves with the expectation that others will play along rather than put us in our rightful place.  It's not only socially acceptable to cater to the narcissism of others, but it is likely foundational to society itself.

There are instances in which a self-aggrandizing lie has the potential to harm others, which arise when there is a practical need for those qualities: there is no harm in believing (or pretending to believe) a person's claim to have certain abilities and skills until you must count upon them to actually use those alleged abilities for some practical end.   And this is where self-aggrandizing lies unravel, and you are disappointed for having counted upon them.

But to the point of distinction between the mercenary lie and the self-aggrandizing one: there is no immediate benefit to telling a self-aggrandizing lie, except to feel better about oneself.    There is no immediate transaction to which the lie is functional.   However, in the broader sense of a relationship, it could be argued that the self-aggrandizing lie is laying the groundwork for future transactions - the liar may not gain an immediate benefit but believes he might do so in future.   In this context, the distinction becomes fuzzy and speculative until a specific transaction presents itself, if it ever does.

Doing Honest Business

This meditation has become a bit unraveled, and I don't have a smooth transition back to where I had intended to go - so pardon this unceremonious lurch back onto the tracks:  In the context of commercial relationships, dishonesty can be avoided by being reasonable about what we are willing to give and what we are willing to accept in return.

An honest seller would be truthful about the value of their goods, and accept that they will sell only to customers who genuinely need them.   Eschewing greed for revenue requires a firm dedication to honestly recognize that some people need a product, but others don't, and that the latter market is not sustainable.   Selling as much as possible to as many people as possible regardless of whether a product is suitable and beneficial to the customer leads to deceptive practices.

An honest buyer would likewise be truthful about the value of having their needs served, and accept that they will be expected to pay a fair and appropriate amount for their needs to be met.   Casting aside the desire to deceive others into giving them more for less requires a customer to have some understanding of the full cost of production and distribution, and that to have a product available in the long run means compensating the provider for his costs such that he may sustain his operations and provide a reasonable return to investors.

And perhaps I'm being a bit Pollyannaish, but I have the distinct sense that markets do not vary from the point of honesty by very much or for very long.  A company has a core of stable customers with a genuine need for their product - and while it can deceive others into thinking the product is beneficial for them, the fact that it is not will eventually become self-evident and those customers will not stay for long.   A customer who routinely cheats his suppliers will likewise eventually be discovered and refused service.   There is greater value to both parties in seeking a stable and sustainable level of interaction.

I also have a sense that social media, of all things, is likely to be very helpful in this regard because information about both customers and suppliers is exposed, recorded, and made available for public scrutiny.   Customers are already checking up on suppliers by verifying facts and checking reputations online, and companies are already identifying instances of consumer fraud by monitoring the conversations in social media with an attentive eye toward indiscreet disclosures.

But whether this exposure will cause people to become more honest or merely more crafty and secretive in their dishonesty remains to be seen - and is likely a topic that will lead me even further afield.

Friday, March 7, 2014

Uninterruptible Action

I've been pondering one of the finer points of praxeology - namely, the necessary and sufficient causes for an action or course of action to be declared uninterruptible.   If that sounds a bit finicky and tedious, it likely is - and what follows is probably going to be boring, but I sense it may be necessary.


An action is deemed interruptible when the actor cannot or will not be dissuaded from its completion.

  • "Cannot" is purely functional.   Inertia will carry the motion through to its completion.
  • "Will not" is psychological.   The actor is so committed to the completion of the action that he will choose not to refrain.

In either instance, the expectation is that the actor will certainly complete the action because there is no perception or reasonable expectation of a functional or psychological interruption.

An "action" is (or may be) a component of a task.   It seems unlikely that there would be an uninterruptible task because that would require each action to be uninterruptible, and for there to be no opportunity for interruption between each action and the one following it.

Another persnickety distinction should be made between "interruption" and "prevention."  Prevention occurs prior to the initiation of an action.  A person who lacks the capacity or resources to begin the action is not interrupted in the course of performing it, but prevented from undertaking it prior to initiating action.

Functional Interruption

Functional interruptions are physical phenomena that prevent the task from being completed.    An object that suddenly obstructs an attempt to move from one place to another in a straight line is a functional interruption, particularly if there is no way to get around it.

In general, functional interruption is a factor of the environment, and typically consists of an unexpected or unpredicted change in the conditions in which the action is taken.

Arguably, failure to recognize a condition that would prevent an action serves as a functional interruption when it is recognized.  If the actor had knowledge before initiating the action, he would have been prevented - but if he discovers this after the action has been initiated, than it constitutes an interruption.

Psychological Interruption

Psychological interruptions are factors that will undermine the actor's will to complete an action - or in smaller words, that will make him quit.   The sudden realization that the action that was originally planned will not achieve the results desired, even if it is completed according to plan, is a psychological interruption because it is still functionally possible to complete the task, but there is no longer motivation to do so.

Psychological interruptions may be in reaction to the environment, but their nature is always internal - the sensory data about the environment is interpreted and combined with somatic state data to result in an assessment that impacts motivation.

It might also be accurate to suggest that psychological interruptions are always surprises to the actor.   If he had known or predicted that he would lose the will to complete a task, he might have thought better of initiating the action.   He may change his mind in the course of performing an action, but before initiating it he was certain that he had the will to complete it.

Aren't All Interruptions Psychological?

I sense that the argument could be made that most, though not all, interruptions are psychological in their nature: when the actor recognizes the functional interruption, a psychological interruption follows quick on its heels as he realizes that the functional interruption will prevent the action from having its desired results and will lose his motivation to complete the action.

However, it is also possible for a functional interruption to fail to be recognized at all - and as a result, an accident will occur.  That is to say that if a person who is walking a desired path recognizes a sudden obstruction, he will choose to stop walking, and this is psychological.

But if the actor fails to recognize the obstruction and walks right into it, the psychological interruption does not take place and the action has continued until it has been functionally prevented.  In that sense the result of the action is unintentional and there was no reasonable opportunity to recognize and react on a psychological level.

Is there any value in this?

I sensed from the start that this entire meditation would be tedious and likely gratuitous, but there is some value to be gained in experience design: the "happy path" of task schematization presumes that no interruptions will occur in the course of completing each action in the task, and contingencies are planned for predicted interruptions or distractions.

However, this is based on the presumption that interruptions will be recognized and can be acted upon.   Unless it is recognized that certain actions are functionally or psychologically uninterruptible, contingencies will be missed or falsely identified - hence considering the interruptability of action is necessary to accurate experience design.

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Psychology and Industrial Efficiency

I recently read Hugo Munsterberg's book on Psychology and Industrial Efficiency and found it to be a very promising, yet rather disheartening approach to the topic of human behavior in manufacturing and commerce.

It is, first and foremost, an extension of the notion of Scientific Management and pays due respect to Taylor for the wondrous advances in productivity that resulted.  Yet while the science of management has been focused on the praxeological capacities of the human being, it has entirely neglected the psychological ones. And where there is no motivation, the physical ability to engage in action is moot.

While the topic of the book firmly follows its title in being "industrial," Munsterberg explores more than productivity in traditional industries, consider the full scope of mankind's economic behaviors as a supplier of labor and consumer of goods.   He has, in that sense, the right perspective on economics as not merely theoretical consideration of the mathematical evidence of human action, but the purpose of human action itself, and commercial behavior in the context of life in general.

Of chief importance is that he recognizes the need for commercial interests and academic interests to reconcile: the academic must recognize that exploring ideas without a thought for their practical implementation is merely a leisure pursuit that is ultimately of benefit to no-one, and the businessman must recognize that effectiveness is not the result of sheer force of will and personal power, but of leveraging the properties of things (and people) in a manner that is best instructed by scientific inquiry.

This book is offered as the beginning, with an acknowledgement that there is a tremendous amount of work left to be done to achieve the full benefits of progress in the commercial sector.   It is, all in all, a highly philosophical work that suggests a much needed change in perspective - though it is grounded in methodology and practical application.

I did open this meditation by stating that this book was "promising yet rather disheartening."  The disheartening element is that the book was written in 1913 - just over a century ago - and has evidently received virtually no consideration until the last few decades, and very little even then.  As a result the situation today is much the same as that of Munsterberg's time - there's a great deal of potential for improvement in the workplace and in the human condition, though far less of a sense that it will be recognized and seized upon.