Michael Barnwell March 13, 2009
Netflix origami: extending the experience beyond the flick. (via)
Being able to predict human behavior is a real talent that deserves praise and rich rewards. Netflix agrees and since 2006 has been holding an ongoing competition to improve the accuracy of its movie recommendations to members, handing over one million dollars to the team who can deliver a 10% increase in the accuracy of its “world-class movie recommendation system” Cinematch. This, of course, will require a complex algorithm and an equally complex judging standard involving something called the RSME (root mean squared error) of a data set. Put simply, competitors are vying to predict how likely Customer Sarah is to give “Sleepless in Seattle” a 5-star rating.
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Bob Maynard March 11, 2009
Gorilla spotting in Buenos Aires, Argentina. (via)
There’s an old tenet of web design that says if you need to explain how a page works, then you need to redesign the interface. Fair enough: no amount of explanatory copy can make up for bad design. But what to do when a page is necessarily complex, as is sometimes the case with detailed transactional experiences? Or when the client requests a level of complexity you’ve recommended against?
Content strategists often face this problem. An extra bit of directional copy would—theoretically, at least—clear up confusion about what to click and where to go next. Problem is, if users are already engaged in a task (say, if they’re on step 3 of a 5-step process), it can be nearly impossible to reach them. Even if you flash a dancing gorilla on the screen. Seriously.
This lack of awareness is called “perceptual blindness.” In a classic test of experimental psychology, two Illinois professors showed a short video to their students. The video featured a several people passing around two basketballs. Before show time, the professors instructed their students to count the number of times the ball was passed between the players. Watch the video here and see if you get the right answer.
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