Ideas

Tag: awareness

  • The Power of Cognitive Dissonance.

    One of the design principles conveyed in “The Universal Principles of Design” is cognitive dissonance.  I first stumbled upon this concept when reading “Mistakes Were Made – Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts” and find it extremely interesting.

    What is cognitive dissonance anyway?

    “Cognitive dissonance is the state of mental discomfort that occurs when a person’s attitudes, thoughts, or beliefs (i.e., cognitions) conflict.  If two cognitions agree with one another, there is consonance, and a state of comfort exists.  If two cognitions disagree with one another, there is dissonance, and a state of discomfort exists.” (from the Universal text)

    One of the interesting examples conveyed in the text is the success behind the AOL “free hours” marketing campaign.  Do you remember when just about everyone in the world received one of these free CD-ROMs?  All you had to do was take the time to sign-up using the automated process, and you were granted free access for a limited time period.  It is possible that you may have become a subscriber – albeit temporarily.

    What’s interesting is once the free period draws to a close, people are less likely to cancel the service because of the time investment setting up their account.  They are more inclined to have positive feelings with the service to reduce the cognitive dissonance they experience when the trial ends.  This results in paid subscriptions.

    While the time investment is a critical factor here, of equal (or greater) importance is the incentive.  The incentive is the free trial period.

    According to the authors, “When incentives for an unpleasant task are small, they reduce dissonance by changing the dissonant cognition – “i.e. it is okay to perform this task because I like it”.  When incentives for an unpleasant task are large, people reduce dissonance by adding a consonant cognition – e.g. “it is okay to perform this task because I am paid well”.”

    In the case of AOL, the company wanted customers to feel positively about the service – thus, providing a small incentive.

    From an advertising and marketing perspective, it is clear that cognitive dissonance is a very powerful weapon.  If you start with dissonant cognitions and then provide immediate paths to alleviate the dissonance, you will have greater success in influencing the potential customer.

    The influence of cognitive dissonance goes beyond advertising and marketing – it can also be found in crime investigations.

    When it comes to identifying a suspect, detectives are likely (not always) to come to their own conclusions about what happened, and then fit the evidence to support that conclusion.  They will also ignore any evidence that contradicts it.  In extreme cases, officers have crossed the line from legal to illegal actions to reduce dissonance and end up convicting innocent people.  Jurors can fall into a similar “trap”.  In fact, their beliefs become stronger the sooner they reach their own conclusion about what happened.

    What’s the lesson here?

    For one, being aware of cognitive dissonance is the first step towards a path of better decision making. If you find yourself heading down a path of “self-justification”, your mind is trying to correct your feelings of cognitive dissonance in any way that it can.  You can pause to understand these feelings and choose to take a more constructive approach.  You can also try to identify your feelings of dissonance and try to separate them.  You may discover that it is possible to experience “both” feelings by simply understanding each independent of the other.

  • Using Tag Clouds to Increase Awareness

    In an effort to accelerate real progress across the board, I’ve listed twelve activities that can encapsulate where I spend most of my time and energy: (I realize that some activities naturally overlap)

    1. Drawing
    2. Reading
    3. Playing
    4. Thinking / Reflecting
    5. Creating
    6. Learning
    7. Writing
    8. Training
    9. Resting
    10. Communicating
    11. Cleaning / Organizing
    12. Recording / Documenting

    By periodically recording what I am doing at a given moment, I can gain a better understanding of where I am spending most of my time and energy.  While this may seem somewhat laborious, I think there is benefit in recording activity in this manner.

    For example, if you were to associate tags to each activity when it is recorded, you can ultimately employ the use of a “tag cloud” to easily see where you are spending your time.  You can see an example of a tag cloud for this site on the left sidebar.  Words that are used more frequently appear larger, thus giving the viewer an immediate understanding of the prevalent themes in each post / page.  (A full explanation and supporting examples of tag clouds can be found at IBM’s alphaWorks “Many Eyes” site here.)

    You could also append the amount of time you are spending on each activity to gain even more awareness.  For example, let’s say that you read between 1 and 3 hours per day.  You could “tag” your activity entry as follows:

    • Reading-1 (i.e. I read for 1 hour)
    • Reading-2
    • Reading-3
    • Reading-2
    • Reading-2
    • Reading-2

    In this example, the tag “Reading-2” would stand out from the others because it’s the average time that you spend reading at any given moment.  This is important because some activities can take longer to “get in the flow” than others.  I know from experience, certain activities – especially drawing – can take longer to achieve any sense of “flow” than say, reading.

    The key is to leverage what the “tag cloud” is telling you in order to plan your development (activities) more effectively.

  • “True” and “False” Advancement Experience

    Ten years ago (yes, I think all the time), I wrote the following article about two concepts that I labeled “true” and “false” advancement (learning) experience:

    True advancement experience (TAE) is experience that is pro-active and “real”.  Information is obtained on the way to a clear goal.  The more information and experience that is turned up along the way strengthens the overall advancement experience.  A goal must exist in order for true advancement to occur.

    False advancement experience (FAE) is experience that is wasteful and potentially meaningless.  FAE occurs when there is no key goal in place.  Information that enters the system becomes quickly assimilated, but due to the increased flow, the retrieval and retention rate is decreases dramatically.  Information overload will always occur in this type of learning environment.  An example of a FAE is spending an increased amount of time configuring a windowing system when the command-line interface is already sufficient.  Experience gained from system-specific configuration is mostly FAE since most of the time spent is due to lack of planning and documentation more than anything else.

    Knowing the differences between TAE and FAE is very important to overall advancement.  Time is always a commodity; therefore it must be used wisely.  Know exactly what you are attempting to learn and what you need to accomplish, and your advancement and success rate will increase.

    Ten years later, has my perspective changed about TAE and FAE?  Yes and no.  Let me explain.

    Let’s say that you are interested in computer graphics, and you have an interest in animation.  One potential starting point is to acquire a 3D animation program and start learning the basics.  After installing and launching the application, you are overwhelmed with the number of features.  This is where things become interesting.

    If you start investigating other aspects of the program that have nothing (or little) to do with animation, you could label this “false” advancement experience since what you are learning is not essential to your end goal.  In contrast, if you stay true to your goal of becoming an animator (or at least learning how) and just focus on aspects of the program that involve “animation”, you will gain the experience that you were originally interested in and thus have gained “true” advancement experience.

    One possibility of course is that you could choose to learn about other aspects of the program first and then eventually get back to the core “animation” functionality.  In this way, you are just taking a slight “detour” from your destination to gain broader context.  Is this really “false” advancement experience?

    Another possibility is that you choose the second path – i.e. “true” advancement experience – and find out that you have to learn other aspects of the program to be able to start animating.  More specifically, you may need to learn how to create a 3D model that you can eventually animate!  Is this really “true” advancement experience?

    As you can see here, labeling one’s learning (or advancement) experience as “true” or “false is perhaps too restrictive.

    Given my pursuits of numerous goals, I think learning effectively comes down to awareness (“what do I want to learn?”) and focus (“how do I want to learn the material?”).

    For example, in order to gain the most from your learning experience, you need to know what you want to accomplish.  The answer could very well be “I don’t know”.  This is a perfectly acceptable answer as it provides you with a lot of freedom to explore different areas.  In contrast, if you know that you want to be an animator (using the example above), this at least gives you a “learning beacon” towards which you can navigate.

    Once you have awareness, you now need to focus.  Assuming you know you want to learn animation, you can still explore other areas of the software application without feeling that you are veering off-course.  The trick here is that the degree of your focus will determine how much time and effort you spend in a different area, and whether you ultimately return to your original “path”.

    For example, let’s say that you need a 3D model to animate.  Instead of taking a separate path to learn how to model, you could instead focus your efforts on using an existing 3D model.  This would save you time and get you back on track.  But here again, there is some risk in being “too” focused on your end goal.  At some point you will eventually need to learn how to model new objects to further broaden your experience.  Should you do that now or later?

    At this point, you can start to understand some of the challenges I’ve personally faced in learning new things.  My personality is one that loves to learn and build connections between unrelated topics.  Because I understand the benefits, I allow myself considerable freedom to explore new areas and concepts to formulate new ones.  However, as I learn new material, I take time to continuously refine where I am going (i.e. “awareness”).

    In summary, when taking on a new challenge, take the time to gain awareness of what you want to learn and try to map out a strategy on how to accomplish your goal.  Once you get into the learning process, you will find new “pathways” that you need to consider taking.  Don’t be afraid to take these paths but keep your destination in mind, and don’t be afraid to change the destination.