Category: Hmmm

I spent 90 minutes this morning at a focus group marketing survey event. Curiously, I’ve never heard my friends talk about participating in such a thing, nor have I seen blog comments. Perhaps everybody treats the non-disclosure agreement more strictly than I….
I think I can say a few things without violating the NDA. The focus group seemed to be concerned with the relationship between style and function in a certain category of products. I was shown into a room with six large posters, each illustrating various aspects of a different product in that category. It soon became apparent that one of alternatives these corresponded broadly to today’s product, while two represented design extremes (unattractively bland and unattractively overstyled). The remaining three choices were the ones that were really under consideration. Each represented a clear derivation from the existing product along a particular style axis.
I began by filling in a survey, in which various attributes or predicates were described and I had to rate how the attribute applied to each alternative product on a scale, from “completely” to “not at all”. One interesting twist was that many of the scales allowed for ‘overshoot’. For example, if I’d (hypothetically) been asked to rate how “cuddly” the product was, the range might have run from “not at all cuddly” through “neutral”, to “very cuddly”, and then “excessively cuddly”. Of course some of the attributes were hard to interpret (my favourite was “bold”!), and I made liberal use of the free-form comment space to describe how I’d interpreted the question.
Next I was shown the functional specs and price of each alternative. After studying these, I completed a slightly shorter survey in which I was asked to pay attention to all aspects of each product: style, features, and price.
All of that took about 50 minutes. I was then interviewed for 25 minutes, during which I had the opportunity to clarify and expand on my survey answers; we also dived into the details of certain aspects of particular products. And before I left, I was shown into a room with a different set of product posters (in a completely different product category) and asked to complete a quick survey on those. Clearly the company was running several parallel focus sessions, and were taking advantage of this to gather some extra data points.
Security seemed tight: no cellphones or other gadgets were permitted, and it was by invitation only. The sponsoring company was never named, but I guessed imediately who it was; during the interview I spent some time relating product style and features to corporate images. The process was very well designed; I felt that they had just the right number of people taking the survey at the same time, and just the right number of support staff. I received $125 for my services; truthfully, I would have done it for nothing, but it felt appropriate to get paid.
I learned one thing about myself. A number of the questions asked about buying intention: if this product was available with these features at this price, would you consider buying it? Usual 7-step spectrum answer, from “would definitely consider” to “definitely would NOT consider”. All of my answers were in the first or last columns – no “maybe” or “neutral” responses. During the interview, I interpreted this as follows: “the market is so full of competitive products that life is just too short to worry about maybes. Either something grabs me and seems worthy of serious attention, or I don’t have time for it.” I guess this is my response to the consumer confusion that comes from rampant choice in so many aspects of life (here in the First World, anyway).
Most enjoyable.

You should check our my colleague Dan Templeton’s account of his recent visit to Biloxi, MS. Recent journalistic coverage of the aftermath of Katrina has become predictable and formulaic; I liked the direct simplicity of Dan’s observations.

The part that is truly mind blowing is the scope of the damage. It’s not just a town or a city or a stretch of the coast that is damaged. It’s the entire Mississippi gulf coast. Miles upon miles upon miles of homes and businesses are gone. Four months after the storm most of the coast still looks like the destruction happened last week.

Looking for stock pics for your team-building slideware? Look no further. And when you’re done, click through to here and here. Seriously twisted stuff. Shades of Ricky. But then this is one of the books I’m reading over the break, so what do you expect?

OK: if I was editor of the EDGE, what question would I pose to the pundits? And how about you? Feel free to comment with your suggestions.

EDGE is please to announce that this year’s EDGE Annual Question – 2006 will be published on New Year’s Eve online at http://www.edge.org. The Question, and the responses to date, are under wraps until that time and the press is under an embargo not to publish prior to their January 1st editions. I can promise that this is one of the best yet and you can have a wonderful New Year’s Day browsing through the deep and rich responses to this year’s provocative Question.
Last year, the 2005 EDGE Question – “What Do you Believe Is True even Though You Cannot Prove It?” – generated many eye-opening responses from a “who’s who” of third culture scientists and science-minded thinkers. The 120 contributions comprised a document of 60,000 words. The New York Times (“Science Times”) And Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (“Feuilliton”) co-published by running excerpts in their print and online editions simultaneously with EDGE online publication.

Last year’s contributions were wonderful: definitely worth re-reading.

Most people are well aware of the fact that English and American are two different languages. Amazon.com and the WWW are full of dictionaries and lists pointing out the different meanings of words like “pavement”, “boot”, “fanny”, and so forth. But one thing that is rarely mentioned is the difference in meaning of the words that identify the seasons of the year. And I’m not just talking about “fall” vs. “autumn”. For example, Alec just blogged

By this evening, winter will be half-over and the days will begin to lengthen in the northern hemisphere once more!

In both England and America, the seasons are defined by the equinoxes and solstices. However in the US, a season begins with the event in question, while in England the season is (approximately) centred on the event. At my primary school (Braintcroft, in London NW2), I was taught:

• Winter: December, January, February
• Spring: March, April, May
• Summer: June, July, August
• Autumn: September, October, November

Most of the time the difference is innocuous, but occasionally it causes confusion. For example, I was on a conference call yesterday which included Sun engineers from the US, UK, and other countries. Alec (again!) asked when the next meeting was due to take place, because he was concerned that the schedule was drifting: yesterday’s meeting had been advertised as the “Fall Review” and it had slipped into winter. Nobody remarked upon this at the time. I wonder how many of the people on the call realized that yesterday (December 20) was both the middle of winter for the English and the last day of fall for the Americans.
And then of course there are the Aussies…..

You absolutely must check out Mr Angry and Mrs Calm. Simply amazing. I can’t begin to imagine how it works…

(Via BoingBoing.)

While I’m in India, where Bangalore has been experiencing its wettest month since records began, they also seem to have been having some weather back in Massachusetts. From the Boston Globe: “In Boston earlier yesterday, occasional gusts as high as 55 miles per hour forced pedestrians to lean into them, while downed trees snarled public transit. In the Berkshires, heavy snow fell. Along the coast, ocean waves battered beaches and seawalls, but only minor damage and flooding were reported.”

This has been one of the wettest weeks I’ve known in New England. It’s true that it’s relatively insignificant compared to the hurricanes, mudslides, and earthquakes that have afflicted the world in recent months. However in a region not used to such things, the effect has been dramatic. Here in the metropolitan Boston area we’ve been spared the worst of it, but in western Massachusetts and southern Vermont and New Hampshire the flooding has been dramatic, severe and fatal. See Kimberley’s blog for more (with photo).

The accompanying image makes the point dramatically. (Click for a larger image.) It’s the storm total precipitation from the local National Weather Service office. The data is approximate; it’s estimated from the Doppler radar returns, and tends to understate the local maxima. What’s interesting is the date range: this shows “Precipitation totals since 12:44 AM EDT Fri Oct 7th 2005”. We’re talking about a more or less continuous rain event lasting six-and-a-half days so far… and it’s not supposed to wind down until Saturday afternoon.

The BBC reported on Tuesday that the oldest person in the world, a 115 year old Dutch woman named Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper (“Hennie”), had just died. When she assumed the title last year, reporters asked the inevitable “to what do you attribute, etcetera” questions, and she gave a conventional answer: “I eat a herring every day and I drink a glass of orange juice every day for the vitamins.” However I suspect the real reason was emotional rather than dietary:

Mrs van Andel was a passionate football fan, and supported Ajax of Amsterdam, the Netherlands’ leading team, for most of her life.

(More support for the thesis expounded in How soccer explains the world.)

Let us now drink to the occasionally beneficial consequences of incompetence. Without it, it seems certain that this morning’s bombs in London would have taken many, many lives.