roll for initiative

Reading (and writing) about the Curse of Knowledge yesterday got me thinking about source amnesia.

In another life, a long long time ago, I was working on a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology, studying memory and the fallibility thereof. One concept I researched was source amnesia.

Source amnesia describes the phenomenon of when you forget when or where you learned something while still retaining the factual knowledge. In essence, you forget the source of your knowledge but you retain the actual fact.

Source amnesia is different from retrograde amnesia where you forget your biographical knowledge - the classic TV type of amnesia. It’s also different from anterograde amnesia, where you retain everything you know up to a point but are unable to learn or retain anything new - like HM, the classic anterograde amnesiac.

To understand source amnesia, I think it’s helpful to break memory down into various sub-components. One way to slice it is to differentiate between declarative memory and procedural memory. Declarative memory is knowledge of facts and events, while procedural memory is knowledge of how to do stuff.

Declarative memory can be further divided into two sub-categories - “what” memory (i.e., “semantic memory” or knowledge of facts) and “when” memory (i.e., “episodic memory” or knowledge of specific events or moments in time that you have experienced).

Back to source amnesia … when you learn something new it becomes part of your declarative memory. Specifically, it becomes part of your semantic memory. For some reason, information about the specific episode that resulted in you learning something new is rarely encoded in episodic memory. As a result, you retain the new fact you just learned in semantic memory, but you don’t store the associated event-related information in episodic memory … and voilà - source amnesia.

For example, you know that Ottawa is the capital of Canada (you did know that right?). That’s part of your semantic memory. But I’m guessing that you can’t remember when you learned that (unless you JUST learned that in the last … say … 2 dozen or so words). Remembering the when requires that you encode the specifics of the moment you learned that Ottawa is the capital of Canada - but because you didn’t, you have source amnesia.

I do have to take some exception to the wikipedia article on source amnesia. In that article, they refer to source amnesia as an “explicit memory disorder”. Granted, I haven’t been in grad school for many moons so I’m not (and probably never was) up on the latest on source amnesia, but I’d be hesitant to describe source amnesia as a “disorder”. It’s way too common to be a disorder - it’s almost a natural byproduct of the differences between semantic memory and episodic memory.

And now to bring it full circle with the Curse of Knowledge …

The reason I started thinking about this source amnesia thing in the first place was because it strikes me that the curse of knowledge is somehow related to source amnesia…. Maybe source amnesia falls into a curse of knowledge subset … or maybe it’s the other way around … maybe the curse of knowledge is a symptom or a byproduct of source amnesia.

If you don’t encode the episodic information related to new knowledge it would seem as if you always possessed said knowledge … which would make it hard for you to think back to a time when you didn’t know what you now know (uh oh … I’m getting Rumsfeldian again) and that might make it difficult to sympathize with those who don’t know what you now know.

Hmmm that seems like a bit of a stretch to me. I’ll have to modern jackass that one some more.

A friend “lent” me a copy of the December 2006 issue of the Harvard Business Review, in which there was an interesting article about “the curse of knowledge” by Chip and Dan Heath (brothers maybe?). (Unfortunately, I don’t think they have online versions of the HBR without subscription, but you get a copy of the article for $6 at the HBR web site.)

Chip and Dan were arguing that when upper management puts forth vague business strategies and mission statements like “Provide best-of-breed services and products”, they’re not just drinking the kool-aid. They argue that to someone who’s been immersed in the “logic and conventions” of business, those platitudes actually represent a sort of “business shorthand”. To the biz folk, those statements represent vasts amounts of business related knowledge, accumulated over years of b-school and industry experience.

[I supposed that every discipline uses similar shorthand ... with designers talking about "envisioning transparent interactivity", PMs saying stuff like "push back non-critical cycles to open up the critical path", engineers talking about "shutting down the retention fields to prevent the overloading the Jefferies Tubes", etc. etc. etc..]

Unfortunately, those business strategies and missions statements have a tendency to come across vague and ambiguous to the rest of us, the ones without all that internalized business acumen.

The problem is further compounded by what’s called “the Curse of Knowledge”. Once you know something, you behave as if you’ve always known it and it’s difficult for you to think like someone who doesn’t know what you know (sounds positively Rumsfeldian).

To illustrate their point, they referred to a 1990 psych study by Elizabeth Newton, then a psych grad student at Stamford. (Unfortunately, the study was included in her non-published dissertation, so it was unable to read the original study. Thanks anyway, Google Scholar.) In her study, Newton divided her participants into two groups, tappers and listeners. Tappers had to tap out a common tune on a table (I imagined them doing this with their fingers or a pencil), listeners had to listen and say which song it was.

Funny thing is I tried this with some friends back when we were kids and it’s incredibly difficult for the listener to pick out a song. Try it with a friend: ask them to identify a tune you’ll tap out, and pick something easy, like Happy Birthday or Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

When Newton asked the tappers to predict how often the listeners would guess the song correctly they said that the listeners would get it right about 50% of the time. Since they knew the song they were tapping out, the task seemed incredibly easy for them and they assumed it would be the same for the listeners.

The ACTUAL success ratio was much much smaller. Out of 120 songs, listeners only got 3 right, for a success ratio of 2.5%.

So, back to the biz guy and his grand-yet-incomprehensible-ideas. Chip and Dan argue that there are ways for you to beat the curse of knowledge trap. It’s all rather basic, really. If you’re aware of this curse of knowledge, you’re in a good position to be able to avoid it’s pitfall by translating your ideas back into lay-speak. (Though I guess the challenge would be to do so without coming across as patronizing.)

Chip and Dan suggest using “concrete language” and “stories” to avoid the curse of knowledge and get your point across to other people. Which seems extremely similar to “speak the users language” and “use scenarios and personas” … all things we user research folks try to do with users and designers.

Maybe there’s a market out there for user testing business models and strategies. Damn, maybe I should patent that!

Looks like I was a tad bit ahead of the time with the whole loyalty program thing for online travel sites (see original here). Expedia.com is rolling out a new loyalty program, effusively called the “Thank You Network“.

Okay, so they’ve probably been working on this thing for a year or so … so chances are they weren’t wholly influenced by my insightful if not-quite-ahead-of-its-time ramblings.
In any case, the pretty basic system: you earn one ThankYou point for every dollar you spend on Expedia. You then redeem points for “stuff”.

This illustrative chart walks you through the complexities of the system:

Unfortunately, it’s not immediately clear how this stacks up to other miles or awards programs; I took a quick look over the Thank You Network site, but did not find a list of how many points it takes to book a national or international flight.

But … I wonder if you can get points from the Thank You Network AND from the airline on which you’ve booked your flight. In fact, if you use a mileage credit card to book your travel on Expedia on an airline … you could potentially get credited for the trip on 3 different rewards system! Hmmm this might be worth looking into.

Video games have long borrowed from other media forms. Developers use cutscenes and in game cinematography to drive the storyline - and the best cutscenes are as effective as the best Hollywood has to offer. Horror games make great use of sound effects and music to heighten the suspense, much like horror films have been doing since Nosferatu.

Games have also borrowed from TV. One of my favorite games from back in the day was Interstate ‘76, which had a hokey ’70s TV show feel, including a great opening sequence. Watch this great opening movie and credit sequence and tell me that it doesn’t hit that ’70s action series feel on the head: I’76 Opening Movie.

Today, video games are becoming such a big part of popular culture that we’re starting to see some design ideas going the other way - from video games to TV and movies.

Sports broadcasts and games are a prime example of this cross pollination. Football video games were overlaying the scrimmage and 1st down lines decades ago - which is a common practice in football broadcasts these day.

Sports broadcasts have also borrowed some camera techniques from video games. The flyover, fly-by-wire, aerial camera required need technology to pull off but video games have been using that for a long time … which they probably originally borrowed from the movies to begin with.

Examples of this type of borrowing are everywhere. The Matrix’s “we’re all living in a virtual reality MMORPG” is heavily influenced by video games. Max Payne took the bullet cam and made it the interactive bullet time. And it’s only a matter of time before sports broadcasts figure out how to do real-time bullet cam. And soon after that DVRs will figure out how to give users the ability not only to stop and rewind live TV, but also allow the viewer to change camera angles at the same time … basically a bullet time camera for live TV.

Sign me up!

It’s time for another round of me talking about things I really have no bidnez talking about.

Today’s installment relates to online travel booking sites, like Expedia, Travelocity, Hotwire, Orbitz, Priceline, etc etc etc. There are literally (READ: figuratively) TONS of them. Which is good if you’re looking to buy a cheap ticket. As a consumer, you have all these options at your (literal) fingertips and the cost of switching from one site to another is nil. Which I guess is the problem with the ENTIRE online retail sector. With absolutely NO cost associated with switching retailers consumers have no reason to base their purchasing decisions on anything else but the final price.

Let’s go back to our travel sites for a minute. If I want to go to Puerto Rico for instance, I can go to all major sites and see how much tickets from each site costs me. Today, a flight from MeHomeTown to SJU costs $431 on Travelocity, $435 on Expedia, $435 on Hotwire, and $437 on Orbitz. (Side note: The bastards at Orbitz try to trick people by saying their ticket costs $378, but look at the fine print and you’ll see that the “total” cost is $437. Why the hell would I want to know just what the face value of the ticket is without all the airport taxes and other related fees?! Don’t we all have to pay those?! All I care about is my total out of pocket costs, not some hypothetical price I’d pay if there were no fees and taxes. Orbitz folks - that’s a stupid, cheap trick and you know it). In any case, if I were buying that today I’d buy the $431 ticket on Travelocity just because it’s $4 cheaper than the others. I can do this because I have absolutely no loyalty to any of those sites. None whatsoever. If one of them was 50 cents cheaper than the other I’d probably go with that one.

(To make matters worse for the good people at the online travel sites … I just found out about Kayak.com, which does all my comparison shopping for me! If you don’t know about Kayak.com, you should check it out next time you’re trying to save $3 on that LA to NYC flight.)

So what’s a biz dev person at one of these travel sites gonna do? Say you’re some poor MBA-type person at Expedia, trying to figure out how to stay competitive in a very very tight field. What’re you gonna do?

If I were said poor MBA-type person at Expedia, I’d look for ways to create some sort of loyalty within my customer base. Well, since I’m all pro-consumer research and shit, I’d first try to find out what the top issues with the online travel shopping experience were. Then I’d try to find out how customers and potential customers feel regarding loyalty to online travel sites. Only after doing all my research-y homework would I try to come up with creative ways to get customers to feel some loyalty to our site.

Obviously, I haven’t done either of the two things I said I would do, but off the top of my head, I think there are a few things that Expedia (for instance) could do right now that would help instill some sort of customer loyalty.

• Partner up with major airlines and/or credit cards to give bonus miles for trips booked on Expedia. Well, airlines probably wouldn’t like that too much, but I don’t see why credit card companies wouldn’t be up for such “synergistic” cooperation.
• Borrow a page from Amazon.com and set up an Expedia Prime(TM) account that provides discounts and additional savings for members. (Amazon’s Prime membership service gives you free 2nd-day shipping for all your orders for $79/year). The pricing and benefits provide by the yearly membership would be critical to the success and customer appeal of this program. The benefits to the customer are also critical, but vouchers for free meals, nights at hotels, or car rentals days at their destination would work. Or free upgrades to hotel room, car class, an even airline seats.
• Borrow yet another page from Southwest Airlines and give away big discounts or even free tickets for every 5 (or 10) trips booked on Expedia.

As you can see, all of these are variations on the basic customer loyalty program. Coffee shops use them. Airlines use them. Credit cards use them. Not being a poor MBA-type, I not seeing the downside of any of this.

So, any MBA-types and/or people who work at travel sites, why aren’t you doing this already?