the little things we complain about...

This is so funny. Here's a link to Louis CK on Conan, called "Everything's amazing, nobody's happy". It's about how spoiled we are these days with technology. It reminded me of my past discussion about the paradox of choice. There are so many funny one-liners that are so true!

"How quickly the world owes him something he knew existed only 10 seconds ago."
"You're sitting on a chair... in the sky."
"Give it a second. It's going to space!"

Learning from Nature

I've always loved nature, and in the last year or so I've become fascinated by biomimicry- learning how we can mimic nature in design. Ideally this design allows us to solve problems more efficiently, causing less environmental damage. For example, there is quite a bit of design happening that mimics gecko feet for adhesion purposes and lotus leaves for their ability to self-clean.

My classmate John and I were just chatting about jellyfish and squid and he mentioned a TED talk by David Gallo called, "Underwater Astonishments." I love the bioluminescence of some of the jellies in this video. And the Octopus Vulgaris's ability to change pattern, color, brightness and TEXTURE to blend into its surrounding algae is absolutely incredible (see above).

I'm perplexed by how much money we spend on space exploration, when we've only explored 3% of the deep sea and it is believed to house more diversity than the tropical rainforests. Time to go scuba...

Design Project 3 - DIRT STOP

The Problem:
Teens and adults in the US maintain poor eating habits that are manifested as unhealthy diets and serious medical problems. Unhealthy eating is encouraged starting in childhood in the form of prepared snacks and meals that conceal the origin of the food and disconnect the consumer from the process of preparation.





Framework developed from human factors research- shows a void of individuals who understand the origin of food and who are significantly involved in food preparation.




Design Principles for DIRT STOP:




The goal of DIRT STOP is to provoke ...

behavior change in kids aged 4-11 towards a lifestyle that involves
healthy eating by creating an experience that enhances the
understanding of the origin of food and regularly
engages kids in the process of
food preparation.


Where can DIRT STOP experience be implemented and who benefits?






Who wins?

- Children and Parents! Kids look forward to grocery trips. They are engaged with family and friends. It’s fun to play with food while learning where it comes from.

- Businesses! It’s a play destination that regularly draws customers to the store. Our framework shows that it fills an opportunity gap.

- Humana! Behavior change in childrens’ eating habits translates to healthier adults with fewer medical problems.
“Obesity-associated annual hospital costs for children and youth more than tripled over two decades” - Institute of Medicine

- The Earth! Customers shop for local and organic foods and demand products with less packaging.

Do too many choices make us feel worse?

As a follow up to Gladwell’s talk, I watched Barry Schwartz's TED Talk, The Paradox of Choice (start watching at about 8:00). It’s an interesting comparison to Gladwell’s talk because Schwartz discusses the negative consequences of having too many choices. He says the first effect of it is that we experience a sense of paralysis- not knowing what to decide upon. Secondly, and what I find most interesting, is that because we are faced with so many choices (for example- 46 styles of tomato sauce- chunky, zesty, etc.) we end up less satisfied with our resulting choice than if we had had fewer options. This is because it’s easy to imagine that we could have made a different and better choice and these imagined alternatives induce us to regret the decision we made. This regret subtracts from our satisfaction even if our decision was a good one.

Part of the reason we feel worse with our decisions when we have so many things to choose from is because our expectations of how something should be go up with so many options. Schwartz tells a story of when he went jeans shopping and had to decide between hundreds of different styles, cuts, washes, thicknesses, materials, etc. He ended up picking jeans that were definitely more comfortable than he says jeans used to be without all the choices, but nevertheless, he was less satisfied than he used to be. He said he “did better but felt worse.” I like his explanation for this. He says that because there are so many options, we become responsible for the outcome, not the jean maker or the world around us. When you don’t feel completely satisfied, you think to yourself, “I could have done better.” There is no excuse for failure and we blame ourselves. Schwartz connects this to the boom in clinical depression over the last couple decades. We may be doing better with all these choices, but we feel worse.

Schwartz argues that the more options there are, the easier it is to regret anything at all that is disappointing about the choice you made. From an economist’s perspective, this is like opportunity cost: how much we value things depends on what we compare them to. It’s easy to see attractive features of things we reject and this makes us less satisfied with alternative we choose. At a more general level, a common belief is that income redistribution only benefits the poor. Schwartz continues to argue, however, that reducing choices is a pareto improving move. What enables choice is material affluence. Therefore if choices are reduced, and income is redistributed, everyone will be better off, because as we’ve learned, too much choice can make us feel worse even if we’re doing better.

I find Schwartz’s discussion very pertinent for the consumer. While we may have a taste for variety, it is not necessarily in our best interest to be bombarded with so many choices. Some choice is better than none but we've passed the point where so many options improve our welfare. As Schwartz puts it, “everyone needs a fishbowl.”