Calculating the cost of meetings
Meetings are necessary for information sharing, but are expensive in terms of time and money. If an application had access to a company's payroll and calendar »
Commonplace book
A commonplace book is a tool to catalog ideas, quotes, factoids, and other sources of inspiration. The act of writing them down helps me minimize the »
Office hours at work
Many people are shy about asking for other people's time, even if it's actively encouraged, especially when they're new. For those I work with regularly, I »
Mirror face
People make distinct faces when they look at themselves in the mirror. It's particularly interesting to see the faces people make when seeing themselves in a »
Separate comforters
In Scandinavia, I've noticed that beds, which are intended for two people, often have a single fitted sheet with two separate comforters - one for each »
Communicating discounts
Growing up in the United States, I've taken for granted that people communicate sale prices by noting that a product is X% off. In other words, »
Gambler's fallacy
Users tend to think software is malfunctioning if the same number is randomly generated at an "unnaturally" high frequency. But if each event is independent, there »
The cost of inaction
While people actively discuss things that may go wrong when making a decision, they tend to neglect discussing the cost of putting off a decision or »
Complaints are a measure of engagement
Customer complaints are a sign that a product needs improvement. Sometimes that's because a product doesn't work, but other times it's because users are pushing the »
Why do we get embarrassed?
Embarrassment is a punishment that we impose on ourselves to prevent "socially unacceptable" behavior. The problem is that we each have our own definitions of what »