The Wiki Man

23 August 2008

Rory Sutherland's fortnightly column on technology and the web

In their now famous book Nudge, self-described ‘paternalistic libertarians’ Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein cite this new paint as an example of ‘feedback’ — the notion that people will make better choices when their decisions have rapidly visible results. If you’ve tried typing on an outdated PC, where characters take seconds to appear on screen, you know how disconcerting slow feedback can be. But it can be a matter of life or death: Vehicle Activated Signs (the ones which flash up your speed) have been shown to prevent more accidents than speed cameras — at 5 per cent of the cost. Instant feedback may improve behaviour more than delayed punishment.

Two other concepts introduced by Thaler and Sunstein are ‘defaults’ and ‘choice architecture’. The first highlights the importance of setting the right default in certain decisions (some people believe consent to organ donation should be considered a given unless the deceased is carrying a ‘non-donor card’). ‘Choice architecture’ concerns how we present people with a sensible range of options — not so few that they cannot choose well, but not so many that they are blinded by choice. (Give me a choice of five pension plans and I’ll probably join one; give me a choice of 90 and I’ll probably join none.)

Amazingly there is a single item in your home which defies all three of these Nudge principles. It is the DVD player — a hateful example of bad design.

1) Feedback. Every input to a DVD player has no observable effect for four seconds. Simply ejecting a disk means pressing ‘eject’ then making a cup of tea while you wait for the machine to wrestle with its inner demons. ‘HAL, open the disk bay door!’ ‘I’m sorry, Dave, I can’t allow you to do that.’

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Richard

August 21st, 2008 12:30pm Report this comment

Good point on the security warning. Plus it is pretty hypocrticical while the movie companies insist on 'Region coding'

As a result a DVD legally bought in the USA cannot be played on a machine coded for Europe.

Can you imagine being told that you were not allowed to read the book you bought in New York once you arrived in the UK?

Well this is Sony's message.

I know there are relatively simple ways around region coding but it is an established legal pricipal that those calling for equity should have clean hands.

Sony etc have pretty grubby mitts on this one

Rory Sutherland

August 23rd, 2008 2:05am Report this comment

Even more bizarre is the information at the beginning of some DVDs that the ensuing film is not authorised for viewing on oil rigs.

Do they seriously imagine anyone on an oil rig has ever been deterred by this?

Tom

August 28th, 2008 4:02pm Report this comment

On piracy warnings, the more lunatic one is the one that tells you very forcefully that there is no point buying a pirated DVD because the quality will be crap. Sadly, the fact that they need to spend money telling us that the quality is bad signals that actually it isn't all that bad. IF it were, people would stop buyig hooky DVDs and the need for the advertising would disappear. Their ad in fact encourages you to buy knock-off DVDs.

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