tag:jomrcr.svbtle.com,2014:/feedJoe Mercer2019-08-22T21:07:13-07:00Joe Mercerhttps://jomrcr.svbtle.comSvbtle.comtag:jomrcr.svbtle.com,2014:Post/what-are-you-feeling-right-now2019-08-22T21:07:13-07:002019-08-22T21:07:13-07:00What are you feeling right now?<p>Pause.<br>
.<br>
What are you feeling right now?<br>
.<br>
.<br>
.<br>
.<br>
.</p>
<p>Perhaps…</p>
<ul>
<li>Take a walk</li>
<li>Take a nap</li>
<li>Message someone about lunch</li>
</ul>
<p>.<br>
.<br>
.<br>
.<br>
.<br>
.<br>
.<br>
.<br>
.<br>
.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions">https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions</a></p>
tag:jomrcr.svbtle.com,2014:Post/work-term-report-building-a-decision-engine-for-megaphones-on-instagram2016-01-03T16:48:46-08:002016-01-03T16:48:46-08:00[work term report] Building a Decision Engine for Megaphones on Instagram<h3 id="introduction_3">Introduction <a class="head_anchor" href="#introduction_3">#</a>
</h3>
<p>Instagram is a popular photo-sharing social network. It follows a publish and subscribe model where users publish their photos to the accounts that follow them (their followers), and see photos from the accounts that they follow (their followings). The photos from each following are aggregated together into the content feed, which is the primary surface of the application. In addition to organic content, the feed contains advertisements, which are pieces of content that companies have paid Instagram to promote. At the top of the feed, Instagram will occasionally show a megaphone. Megaphones are Instagram’s way of self-promoting actions within the app, usually for the purpose of converting low-engaged users to high-engaged users. For example, if a user doesn’t have many followings, Instagram will show them a Suggested Users megaphones to help them discover great content to follow. </p>
<p>Instagram has many different megaphones that it can show to users. Furthermore, Instagram would like to build even more unique experiences that can be selectively targeted with megaphones. As the number of megaphones increases, it begs the question: “How can Instagram show the right megaphone to the right user at the right time?” This report first describes how Instagram built a decision engine to answer that question, and then expands on the answer by explaining how the results of such a decision engine can be post-analyzed to provide additional product insight.</p>
<h3 id="megaphones-are-similar-to-advertisements_3">Megaphones are Similar to Advertisements <a class="head_anchor" href="#megaphones-are-similar-to-advertisements_3">#</a>
</h3>
<p>Users come to Instagram to see organic content in their feed. Megaphones and advertisements have a similar tradeoff in that they displace organic content to generate value. In particular, advertising has been well studied because it provides the revenue backbone for numerous companies, including Instagram. For this reason, it makes sense to look first at how advertisements are targeted, and then see if the process can be co-opted to target megaphones as well. </p>
<p>Traditionally, advertisements weren’t targeted. A content company, such as a television network, would have a certain number of advertising slots. Companies would bid on those slots, and the space would go to the advertisers with the highest bids (Yan). The value of an advertisement was the bid price. Modern Internet companies, like Google and Facebook, were able to improve on this model by personalizing the advertising slots for each user. To achieve this, they introduced a “User Experience” (UX) variable, which represents the per-user impact that each advertisement has on the quality of the product. </p>
<p>This is best understood in the case of Google’s “Cost Per Click” (CPC) ad. In a CPC ad, the company bids on a click, which means they only pay when their advertisement is clicked on (“CPC Bidding”). Since the ideal user experience is to show users advertisements that they want to click on, the UX term can be simplified to Click Through Rate (CTR), which is the percent chance that the user clicks on the advertisement. The value term is still defined as the bid price. The product of the two, bid price * CTR, is the expected revenue of the advertisement. To choose the most optimal CPC ad for each user, Google simply selects the advertisement with the highest expected revenue</p>
<p>Of all types of advertisements, megaphones are most similar to CPC ads. Like CPC ads, megaphones have a value to the user, but that value is only attained if the user clicks through the megaphone. Therefore, is makes sense for Instagram to target megaphones using a process similar to CPC ads. </p>
<pre><code class="prettyprint">OptimalMegaphone = max{value * CTR}
</code></pre>
<p>This is the high level architecture of the megaphone decision engine. The tricky part is predicting the unknowns, <code class="prettyprint">value</code> and <code class="prettyprint">CTR</code>, and doing so in a way that is both personalized and scalable. </p>
<h3 id="predicting-the-value-of-a-megaphone_3">Predicting the Value of a Megaphone <a class="head_anchor" href="#predicting-the-value-of-a-megaphone_3">#</a>
</h3>
<p>The standard way Instagram estimates value is by isolating changes in an A/B test and then analyzing their effects on important metrics (Chopra). In the case of megaphones, the purpose is to promote engagement, so the important metric is Time Spent. Therefore, the standard approach would be to set up a test with one test group for each megaphone, and a control group that doesn’t receive any megaphones, and then compare the increase in average Time Spent for each test group over control. If Megaphone A provided a 4% increase in Time Spent and Megaphone B provided a 2% increase in Time Spent, then Megaphone A would be said to have provided twice as much value as Megaphone B.</p>
<p>The problem with this approach is that it doesn’t compute the value on a per-user scale. Since the goal of targeting is to show “the right megaphone to the right user”, what’s really needed is a model that estimates the value of a megaphone given a user. Such a model can be constructed by running a simple linear regression on a sample of users that are all equally likely to see any of the megaphones in a given time period. Then the change in Time Spent can be calculated on a per-user level using the value before seeing the megaphone as a baseline. The result is a simple linear regression of the form:</p>
<pre><code class="prettyprint">value = DeltaTimeSpent ~ UserAttributes + Megaphone * UserAttributes
</code></pre>
<p>where <code class="prettyprint">DeltaTimeSpent</code> just subtracts the post-megaphone value from the pre-megaphone value, <code class="prettyprint">UserAttributes</code> is a row vector of features, and <code class="prettyprint">Megaphone</code> is a factor variable storing which megaphone the user saw (and zero if the user did not see a megaphone). <code class="prettyprint">Megaphone*UserAttributes</code> is an interaction variable that represents the effect that UserAttributes has on the value of a megaphone. </p>
<p>It’s also important to note that the <code class="prettyprint">Megaphone*UserAttributes</code> terms can be negative, which happens when the showing the megaphone would actually decrease Time Spent. If all the <code class="prettyprint">Megaphone*UserAttributes</code> terms are negative, then it is in Instagram’s best interest to not show a megaphone.</p>
<h3 id="predicting-the-ctr-of-a-megaphone_3">Predicting the CTR of a Megaphone <a class="head_anchor" href="#predicting-the-ctr-of-a-megaphone_3">#</a>
</h3>
<p>In the case of predicting CTR, Instagram can take the model one layer deeper by employing a useful heuristic called Thompson Sampling:</p>
<pre><code class="prettyprint">CTR = (α * CTRi + Clicks) / (α + Impressions)
</code></pre>
<p>Thompson Sampling relies on the assumption that past behavior will be a good indicator of future behavior (Chapelle). When there’s no historical data (e.g. <code class="prettyprint">Impressions = Clicks = 0</code>), then <code class="prettyprint">CTR = CTRi</code>, which can be calculated from a regression model similar to the example above. As data is added to the system (e.g. <code class="prettyprint">Impressions ≥ Clicks > 0</code>), CTR begins to approach the trend <code class="prettyprint">Clicks / Impressions</code>. The constant α controls the balance between the regression model and the trend; a larger value of α will place longer emphasis on the model. The beauty of Thompson Sampling is that it incorporates user behavior to temper the model’s predictions. This leads to a nice dropoff for users that frequently dismiss megaphones. </p>
<h3 id="analyzing-the-megaphone-decision-engine-for-p_3">Analyzing the Megaphone Decision Engine for Product Insight <a class="head_anchor" href="#analyzing-the-megaphone-decision-engine-for-p_3">#</a>
</h3>
<p>The megaphone decision engine essentially boils down to a complex equation mapping user attributes to expected megaphone values. Using these results, Instagram can cluster users into four groups: </p>
<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/subrjmyn7c81dg.png"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/subrjmyn7c81dg_small.png" alt="Screen Shot 2016-01-03 at 4.46.29 PM.png"></a></p>
<p>The users in the left half of this chart are high-engaged, and thus already find value in Instagram. The users in the top half of this chart are getting value from megaphones, which means that Instagram has crafted experiences that will help them find value in Instagram. The users in the bottom right quadrant of this chart are both not finding value in Instagram, and don’t have experiences that Instagram can show them to help them find value in Instagram. These users represent an opportunity for Instagram to craft new experiences that can help a group of users being currently under-served. The results of the megaphone decision engine provide a unique opportunity to identify this group of users, so that they can be observed and highlighted in the design of new features. </p>
<h3 id="conclusions_3">Conclusions <a class="head_anchor" href="#conclusions_3">#</a>
</h3>
<p>Instagram uses megaphones to self-promote actions that it thinks will help improve the experience of low-engaged users. Instagram has multiple different megaphones that it can show users, which begs the question: “How can Instagram show the right megaphone to the right user at the right time?” As Instagram increases its number of megaphones, a scalable targeting system will offer a high level of personalization by optimally choosing the best megaphone (or no megaphone) for each user. </p>
<p>Such a system of optimally choosing megaphones in similar to Google’s modern practice of targeting CPC advertisements. This system relies on two terms: a value term representing the potential revenue, and a UX term representing the chance that the revenue will be attained. Mimicking this process, a decision engine can be built for megaphones on Instagram relying on two models: one to predict the potential value of the megaphone, and another to predict the chance that the user will click on the megaphone.</p>
<p>In addition to targeting megaphones, the megaphone decision engine can be used to provide useful product insights. The results of targeting will cluster users into four groups, one of which is a group of low-engaged users not being helped by existing experiences. These users represent an opportunity for Instagram to build new experiences that appeal to a group of previously under-served users. </p>
<h3 id="recommendations_3">Recommendations <a class="head_anchor" href="#recommendations_3">#</a>
</h3>
<p>As part of the Instagram Growth team I helped build the first iteration of the megaphone decision engine. My first recommendation is to continue optimizing the system. The megaphone decision is built on two models, each of which can be honed by feeding more data and fine-tuning parameters. Another opportunity is to expand on ∆_(TimeSpent )as the megaphone value definition. I would recommend experimenting with value definitions that take into account high leverage metrics like Reciprocal Followers and Feed Inventory. </p>
<p>My second recommendation is to follow up with the megaphone decision engine by analyzing the results to provide product insights. The results of megaphone targeting provide a unique opportunity to identify a group of users that is currently being under-served. By observing these users we can improve our understanding of them, and hopefully build experiences in the future to help them find value in Instagram. </p>
<h3 id="references_3">References <a class="head_anchor" href="#references_3">#</a>
</h3>
<ol>
<li> Chapelle, Olivier, and Lihong Li. “An Empirical Evaluation of Thompson Sampling.” Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 24 (2011): n. pag. Print.</li>
<li> Chopra, Paras. “The Ultimate Guide To A/B Testing.” Smashing Magazine. N.p., 23 June 2010. Web. 12 Dec. 2015.</li>
<li> “CPC Bidding.” AdWords Help. Google, n.d. Web. 12 Dec. 2015.</li>
<li> Evans, David S. “The Online Advertising Industry: Economics, Evolution, and Privacy.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 23.3 (2009): 37-60. Web.</li>
<li> “How The Auction Works.” Facebook Help. Facebook, n.d. Web. 12 Dec. 2015.</li>
<li> Yahyaa, Saba, Madalina Drugan, and Bernard Manderick. “Thompson Sampling in the Adaptive Linear Scalarized Multi Objective Multi Armed Bandit.” Proceedings of the International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence (2015): n. pag. Web.</li>
<li> Yan, Jun, Ning Liu, Gang Wang, Wen Zhang, Yun Jiang, and Zheng Chen. “How Much Can Behavioral Targeting Help Online Advertising?” Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on World Wide Web (2009): n. pag. Web. 11 Dec. 2015.</li>
</ol>
tag:jomrcr.svbtle.com,2014:Post/how-do-i-answer-a-product-design-interview-question2015-12-28T01:00:34-08:002015-12-28T01:00:34-08:00[How Do I] Answer a Product Design Interview Question<p>If you’ve ever interviewed before, you probably know that it’s much easier to tackle interview questions when you have a strategy. For example, Gayle McDowell outlines a five step process for answering Software Engineering technical questions in her book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview-Programming-Questions/dp/098478280X">Cracking the Coding Interview</a>: </p>
<ol>
<li>Ask questions to resolve ambiguity</li>
<li>Design an Algorithm</li>
<li>Write pseudocode</li>
<li>Write code</li>
<li>Test your code</li>
</ol>
<p>Design is the process of deciding what to build, which is different from actually building something. As a result, design questions should be approached differently than technical questions. The purpose of this blog post is to describe a strategy for answering design interview questions.</p>
<ol>
<li>Empathize with the customer</li>
<li>Align with business strategy</li>
<li>Define success</li>
<li>Apply the design process</li>
<li>Start by validating your assumptions</li>
</ol>
<h3 id="1-empathize-with-the-customer_3">1. Empathize with the Customer <a class="head_anchor" href="#1-empathize-with-the-customer_3">#</a>
</h3>
<p>There’s a hot trend in design right now called <strong>Human-Centered Design</strong> (HCD). HCD is a design philosophy that focuses on designing products with the customer in mind (<a href="http://jomrcr.svbtle.com/notes-the-design-of-everyday-things">Design</a>). This sounds stupidly obvious, so it’s surprising how easy it is to screw up. For example, one trap that designers often fall into is designing for themselves. It’s particularly contagious among designers that are passionate users of the product they work on. Designers will make decisions in favor of what <em>they</em> want, rather than what’s best for the customer. This is essentially a sampling bias, where designers overrepresent themselves in their mental image of the customer. As a designer, you should have a deep, unbiased understanding of your customer.</p>
<p>So how do you know who your customer is? Your <strong>customer</strong> is the people (or things) that will be using your product. This information can usually be teased out from the question. Say you’re interviewing at Spotify and the question is: <code class="prettyprint">"How would you improve Spotify for people that run?"</code> Then your customer is going to be something like, “people that listen to music when they run.” You should try to pair down this definition as much as possible by asking your interviewer questions: Are these people existing Spotify users? Do they have iPhones or Androids? What type of music do they listen to? Involving your interviewer in a discussion defining the customer will validate that you’re taking steps in the right direction. One patented way to mess up a design interview is to design the right product for the wrong person.</p>
<p>If your company doesn’t know who their customer is, then they’re a <strong>startup</strong> (<a href="http://jomrcr.svbtle.com/notes-the-lean-startup">Lean</a>). Designing for a startup is essentially the same as designing for an established company, except that there’s two degrees of freedom to work with. A startup has to design a product AND find a customer for that product. Doing so is sometimes called “finding <strong>product-market fit</strong>”. The approach is to fix one axis, typically the customer, while experimenting along the other. If you’re faced with a startup-y question, your best bet is to double down on steps (1) and (5). This will put your money on choosing which customer to target at the beginning, and validating that you made the right choice at the end.</p>
<p>In later brainstorming phases it will be immensely useful to have a clear and accurate understanding of the customer. One way to achieve this clarity is through the use of <strong>customer personas</strong>. A customer persona is a fictional character that represents your average customer. It should be concrete and human (one trick is to use real customer quotes), but validated by data. For example: “Rob has been a paying Spotify user for almost three years. He listens to a variety of music, including jazz and rock, mostly at work and on his commute. He’s a consistent runner, and will often log upwards of 10 miles a week, and even more when he’s training for something. He will occasionally listen to Spotify when he runs, but he’s much more likely to leave his phone at home. He….” Although you probably don’t need to create customer personas for something as short as an interview (unless the job is skewed heavily towards UX research), they’re useful to consider. It’s often easier to design for an individual, rather than an abstract. More importantly, it’s often easier to pitch a design in the context of an individual. </p>
<p>Designing is a balancing act. There will be many different customers, each vying to push the product in their own advantageous direction. The designer has to weigh each group carefully, and make the decision that benefits the majority. When compromise can’t be reached, it’s up to the design to stay true to the customer.</p>
<h3 id="align-with-business-strategy_3">Align with Business Strategy <a class="head_anchor" href="#align-with-business-strategy_3">#</a>
</h3>
<p>As a designer, your first priority is to represent the customer. That being said, understanding the business context will enable you to make your designs that much more compelling. </p>
<p>Most companies have some degree of <strong>matrix management</strong>. This means that employees are responsible to two managers: a functional manager and a product manager. A design functional manager cares about meta problems: how to maintain consistency across different products, or which tools to invest in. Unless you’re interviewing with a design manager, you probably won’t need to consider this perspective (<a href="http://jomrcr.svbtle.com/notes-high-output-management">Management</a>). </p>
<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/yg79epfqpkqx4w.png"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/yg79epfqpkqx4w_small.png" alt="MatrixManagement.png"></a></p>
<p>In all situations it will benefit a designer to understand the product management perspective. A product manager is in charge of some subset of the company’s product. For example, Sarah is the product manager at Spotify responsible for the Mood feature in the Browse tab, where users can find curated music to compliment the mood they’re in. Product management is usually organized hierarchically. This means that a product manager’s manager will be responsible for a superset of all the features managed by the people under them. Sarah’s boss, George, is responsible for the entire Browse tab, where Spotify users go to find music suggestions. George’s boss, Julie, is responsible for user engagement across all of Spotify. </p>
<p>This hierarchy is managed through a system of <strong>objectives</strong> and <strong>strategies</strong>, where objectives of the manager map to strategies of the employee. For example, Julie’s objective is to increase the amount of engagement that users have with Spotify. Julie has several strategies that she thinks will help achieve this objective, one of which is to provide music suggestions. This strategy maps directly to George’s objective, which is to help users find the music they want to listen to. George, in turn, has his own strategies for achieving his objective, one of which is to use moods to help suggest music that users might want to listen to. This strategy maps to Sarah’s objective, and so on. </p>
<p>A product manager is trying to validate that their strategies are moving the product towards their objective. By moving towards their objective, they in turn help validate that their manager’s strategies are working to achieve higher level objectives, and so on up the product hierarchy. As a designer, your job has two components. First, to help the product manager devise strategies with a pure connection to the objective. Second, to optimize those strategies so as to capture the strongest signal possible. The best designers are able to merge their technical skills with business awareness to be successful on both points. </p>
<p>You should have a discussion with your interviewer to make sure you understand the product team’s objectives. Ideally, you should be able to trace your product team’s objectives up the hierarchy all the way to the company level objectives. The best way to approach this is by mapping the objectives at each level to the strategies of next level up. Let’s do this for our original question: <code class="prettyprint">"How would you improve Spotify for people that run?"</code> Here, the goal of the product is a bit ambiguous. Are we trying to market Spotify to runners as a growth market? Are we trying to build out the premium feature set as a revenue driver? There are a number of different ways we can interpret the objective hiding in this question, and the one we choose will certainly influence the product that we end up designing.</p>
<p>Let’s suppose that this question is being posed by George, who has the hypothesis that Spotify can help people find music by targeting specific activities. This provides us with our business objective: to drive engagement by integrating Spotify into popular activities, like running. With this objective in mind, we can see how the product we’re designing fits into Spotify’s entire business strategy.</p>
<h3 id="define-success_3">Define Success <a class="head_anchor" href="#define-success_3">#</a>
</h3>
<p>Going hand in hand with an objective is a <strong>metric</strong> to measure success. Objectives and metrics have become so synonymous that some “data-driven” companies will make a point of communicating objectives in the form of metrics. If metrics haven’t yet been discussed, you should bring them up to your interviewer and decide which metric best represents your objective. Translating your objective into a metric will clarify your product’s objective and help confirm that you’re heading in the right direction. </p>
<p>When choosing a metric it’s good practice is to apply the <strong>One Metric That Matters</strong> (OMTM) philosophy. OMTM says that for any product team there will be one most important metric. A rule of thumb for choosing a metric is to follow the standard progression of a product: first validate the business objective, then fine-tune the product, and finally grow the user base. The validation metric for your team will usually align with your manager’s business objective. If the product has been validated and is now being fine-tuned, then the value metric is usually Time Spent or Revenue. If the product has been validated and fine-tuned, then the growth metric will usually follow <strong>Growth Accounting</strong>, or <code class="prettyprint">New Users - Churned Users + Resurrected Users</code> (<a href="http://jomrcr.svbtle.com/notes-lean-analytics">Analytics</a>).</p>
<p>At a high level, a good metric should be simple, comparable, and change the way you behave. A simple metric has an obvious connection to the business objective, and uses predictable units at a manageable scale. A comparable metric can be viewed over time to judge improvement. Usually this involves taking derivates of top level metrics. For example, the derivative of total revenue is change in total revenue, which provides insight into whether the company is growing or shrinking. </p>
<p>At many companies new features are evaluated in an A/B testing framework. An <strong>A/B test</strong> is where you segment out two groups of users, and show the test group a new version of the product, and the control group the old version of the product. Then you measure metrics in both groups and compute if the changes in the test group led to a statistically significant rise in the metrics. In situations where A/B testing is possible (such as our Spotify example), you should expect your feature to go through an A/B testing process.</p>
<p>Good metrics should impact decision making. A powerful trick for staying honest to the data is to draw a line in the sand. Before even starting to design, ask yourself how you expect your new design to impact metrics. If you expect your feature to increase average Time Spent, but after A/B testing it you see Time Spent going down, then you shouldn’t release the feature. Even if you put a lot of work into it. </p>
<p>Let’s apply these principles to find a good metric for our working example: <code class="prettyprint">"How would you improve Spotify for people that run?"</code>. Remember that our objective was to drive engagement by integrating Spotify into the popular activity of running. Since this is a new feature, we should measure it with a validation metric. In this case, a validation metric should track George’s higher level business objective of helping users find the music they want to listen to. A good choice is average Time Spent listening to music per user per day. To draw a line in the sand we can expect that the addition of this feature will result in a long term statistically significant increase in the aforementioned metric for the target customer of Spotify users that run.</p>
<h3 id="apply-the-design-process_3">Apply the Design Process <a class="head_anchor" href="#apply-the-design-process_3">#</a>
</h3>
<p>At this point you should have a customer, a goal, and a metric that defines success. Now you can begin the fun part: the design process. The design process that I’m going to use is called the <strong>Double Diamond Design Process</strong> (DDDP), thus named because it consists of two stages wherein each stage contains a divergent brainstorming phase and a convergent selection phase (<a href="http://jomrcr.svbtle.com/notes-the-design-of-everyday-things">Design</a>).</p>
<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/c03gvryxbpvw.gif"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/c03gvryxbpvw_small.gif" alt="DDDP.gif"></a></p>
<p>The purpose of the first two phases, Discover and Define, is to create a strategy. This strategy represents the core assumptions that we will be looking to validate in the fifth and final step. The second two phases, Develop and Deliver, are about implementing the strategy. By the end of the Deliver phase we should have a vision for the finished product. </p>
<p>Let’s walk through the DDDP using our example: <code class="prettyprint">Design a feature for runners that use Spotify</code>. Remember, our customer is Spotify users that jog on a regular basis. Our business objective is to drive engagement by integrating Spotify into popular activities. Our validation metric is the average Time Spent listening to music per user per day. With that, we should have enough information to start the DDDP.</p>
<h4 id="strategy_4">Strategy <a class="head_anchor" href="#strategy_4">#</a>
</h4>
<p>The first phase, Discover, is a brainstorming phase: Why aren’t more Spotify users listening to Spotify when they jog? Perhaps the interface isn’t friendly for people in a mobile state. Perhaps the Spotify music catalogue doesn’t contain good jogging music. Perhaps people can’t find good jogging music. Perhaps… In a brainstorming phase, there aren’t any bad ideas. The goal is to get as many possibilities on the table as possible. </p>
<p>One pitfall people often make in the Discover phase is defining problems in terms of their solution. For example, “Perhaps we should create a special pair jogging headphones to help people use Spotify’s interface while running.” Designing a new pair of headphones is just one potential solution to one potential problem. By defining the problem in terms of the solution, we limit our ability to come up with other creative solutions, such as incorporating voice commands.</p>
<p>The second phase, Define, is about narrowing down the ideas generated in the Discover phase to create a strategy. If we were higher up the product hierarchy, we could pass this strategy down to be implemented by an entire team (similar to how George passed down his activity strategy to us). In this case, our strategy will be to help users find good jogging music. In the next phase we’ll try to find the purest implementation of this strategy. </p>
<h4 id="implementation_4">Implementation <a class="head_anchor" href="#implementation_4">#</a>
</h4>
<p>In the third phase, Develop, we begin brainstorming implementations: How do we help users find good jogging music? We could put a special jogging icon next to good jogging songs to make them more visible in the catalogue. We could curate special playlists of good jogging music. There will be many different ways to implement your strategy, and this brainstorming phase is an opportunity to show off your cleverness and creativity. </p>
<p>The fourth phase, Deliver, is about taking the ideas from the Develop phase and crafting them into a <strong>vision</strong> for the product. When comparing different ideas you should keep in mind two useful concepts: tradeoffs and leverage. <strong>Tradeoffs* refer to the fact that most implementations will trade strength in one area for weakness in another. Curating a unique playlist for each person is a good user experience, but is expensive to compute. **Leverage</strong> refers to the efficiency of the solution in solving the problem. For example, you could create one jogging playlist and share it with every Spotify user, but doing so would have low leverage (not everyone shares your taste in music). At each tradeoff you should try to get the most leverage for your design decisions.</p>
<p>Once you’ve made your tradeoffs and chosen an implementation with the highest leverage, you should take some extra time to present your vision nicely. Your vision will guide the efforts of everyone on the team. It should be short and easy to digest, but poignant and inspiring. In an interview, a good (and quick) way to do this is by telling a story from the user’s perspective. Let’s suppose that our solution is to provide runners with a special radio station that finds music with a tempo matching the pace of their run. A <strong>user story</strong> might be: </p>
<p>“As a user, I’m browsing the Discover page on my phone and I see a special radio station with an icon of a runner and the title ‘For Running’. I click into the station and it takes 15 seconds to analyze my phone’s built in step-counter, and find music in my library with a tempo matching my pace. It auto starts playing the first song, which I can play/pause/skip if I choose. It also re-analyzes my pace every couple minutes to refresh the station with appropriate songs.”</p>
<h3 id="start-by-validating-your-assumptions_3">Start by Validating Your Assumptions <a class="head_anchor" href="#start-by-validating-your-assumptions_3">#</a>
</h3>
<p>Now that you have a vision, you can finally start building something. All hail the engineers!! But what are you going to build? The naive approach is to just start building towards the vision helter-skelter. The problem with this approach is that you’re taking on the accumulated risk of every design decision you’ve made. It’s like only looking at the map once before driving to a new city; the more confusing the route, the more likely you’ll get lost along the way. Instead, you should build towards your vision iteratively, validating your assumptions along the way. The process that we’ll use is called <strong>Build-Measure-Learn</strong> (<a href="http://jomrcr.svbtle.com/notes-the-lean-startup">Lean</a>).</p>
<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/r4ytmhlk6d3yja.jpg"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/r4ytmhlk6d3yja_small.jpg" alt="BuildMeasureLearn.jpg"></a></p>
<p>The Build-Measure-Learn process gives you a structure for systematically testing the assumptions that make up your product vision. By decomposing your product vision into testable chunks, you are essentially building checkups into your roadmap. Remember in Step Three we set our expectations by drawing a line in the sand. If reality ever starts differing from our expectations, then it’s a sign we should take a step back and start revising our assumptions.</p>
<p>You should start by testing higher level assumptions, because higher level assumptions will have a larger impact on the product. Implicitly this means the first assumption you’re helping test is your objective, which was provided from your manager’s strategy. If the results of your work isn’t moving numbers the way your manager expects, the first question to ask is whether you are working towards the right objective. But this won’t be a problem in the interview. Practically speaking, the first assumption you should test is your strategy. </p>
<p>Testing your strategy means building towards your vision in such a way that if your strategy turned out to be wrong it would be discovered quickly. You might hear this iteration of the vision being called the <strong>Minimum Viable Product</strong> (MVP) because it is the minimum changes required to test the core strategic assumptions. Remember our initial strategy was to help users find good jogging music. Our first build might be something as simple as releasing a curated radio station for jogging. From this we can measure whether or not users are interested in finding good jogging music. With this learning we can decide whether to continue pursuing the vision, or whether we should revisit the assumptions we made in our design process. </p>
<p>Suppose users were not interested in the jogging radio station. Perhaps it’s because users don’t need help finding good jogging music. Then we should consider pivoting our strategy (remember we brainstormed multiple strategies in the Discover phase of Step Four). Perhaps the strategy is sound, but the implementation is faulty, in which case we should consider a one of the other implementations we brainstormed in the Develop phase of Step Four. In this particular case though, users were interested in the jogging playlist, so we continued down the path of making the jogging radio station more engaging and available. The result is <a href="https://www.spotify.com/us/running/">Spotify Running</a>.</p>
<p>One of the most powerful aspects of the Build-Measure-Learn loop is its iterative nature; learnings from the n iteration guide the build in the n+1 iteration. This makes Build-Measure-Learn an incredibly optimistic process. It’s not about being right or wrong, but rather about contributing to a process of steady improvement. In the context of an interview, no one expects you to be perfect on the first try. Just give it your best shot and know that in the real world you would use the process to converge towards perfection in the long term. </p>
<h3 id="for-example_3">For Example… <a class="head_anchor" href="#for-example_3">#</a>
</h3>
<p>Let’s walk through the full process using a different example: <code class="prettyprint">Design a new drink item for McDonalds</code> (<a href="http://jomrcr.svbtle.com/notes-the-design-of-everyday-things">Design</a>). Remember our strategy:</p>
<ol>
<li>Empathize with the customer</li>
<li>Align with business strategy</li>
<li>Define success</li>
<li>Apply the design process</li>
<li>Start by validating your assumptions</li>
</ol>
<h4 id="empathize-with-the-customer_4">Empathize with the customer <a class="head_anchor" href="#empathize-with-the-customer_4">#</a>
</h4>
<p>This is a pretty vague question, and McDonalds has a large customer base. We can fish for more information by asking our interviewer if there’s a target market they’re looking to focus on, but let’s suppose the interviewer doesn’t give us any additional information. Instead of getting stuck we can just choose a reasonably promising customer and proceed with the process. The customer that I’ll choose is truckers, whom I assume frequently stop at McDonalds along their routes. </p>
<h4 id="align-with-business-strategy_4">Align with business strategy <a class="head_anchor" href="#align-with-business-strategy_4">#</a>
</h4>
<p>Once again we should fish for information, but let’s suppose we don’t get any. Without more specific instructions, we can just adopt McDonalds general business strategy of being a profitable company.</p>
<h4 id="define-success_4">Define success <a class="head_anchor" href="#define-success_4">#</a>
</h4>
<p>Since our objective is to make McDonalds more profitable, we can define success by measuring profit. Obviously we expect our new drink to increase profit. </p>
<h4 id="apply-the-design-process_4">Apply the design process <a class="head_anchor" href="#apply-the-design-process_4">#</a>
</h4><h5 id="strategy_5">Strategy <a class="head_anchor" href="#strategy_5">#</a>
</h5>
<p>We can further observe that there are two ways a new drink could increase profit. First it could convince customers that currently don’t buy drinks to buy a drink. Second it could convince customers that currently buy drinks to buy a drink with a higher profit margin. I assume truckers typically do buy drinks, so we can focus our initial strategy on selling truckers a drink with higher profit margin. We can frame this as a question: What would make truckers buy a more profitable drink?</p>
<p>One idea is to take an existing drink and try to make it cheaper. For example, perhaps McDonalds could see re-useable cups to truckers to save on the cost of disposable cups. But the savings would be marginal. Another idea is to sell a drink that takes a long time to consume, such as a frozen drink that has to melt. Since ice takes up more space than liquid, the cost of materials for a frozen drink would be less than for the same quantity of a liquid drink. But once again the savings would be marginal. </p>
<p>I do, however, think that truckers might pay more for a drink that lasts longer. I assume truckers get bored on the road and a drink that lasts longer would be more engaging. Or even if the drink doesn’t take longer to consume, but is just inherently more interesting to consume, it might relieve some of the truckers boredom. Let’s use this as our strategy: create an engaging drink that truckers will pay premium for.</p>
<h5 id="implementation_5">Implementation <a class="head_anchor" href="#implementation_5">#</a>
</h5>
<p>What is an engaging drink that truckers would pay premium for? Perhaps we could create a drink that changes flavor over time (as the ice melts?). Perhaps we could do a bubble tea spinoff by adding chewy chunks of tapioca to a drink. Perhaps we could just add a crazy straw to an existing drink, which would make it more difficult to drink quickly. But that would cause a soda to fizz up. We could add a crazy straw a milkshake, but truckers might find that silly. But we could make a milkshake more difficult to drink by making it thicker, by adding more ice cream instead of milk.</p>
<p>All of these ideas have potential, but only the thick milkshake idea can be incorporated without introducing new materials. This certainly makes the implementation a lot cheaper and easier. On the other hand, a flavor changing drink would lend itself to killer marketing campaign. The growing bubble tea trend shows the validity of the tapioca idea, but McDonalds might have to buy the rights or deal with patents. Without brainstorming more options I think it makes sense to continue with the thick milkshake idea.</p>
<p>We can spend the extra minute to sell the vision of this idea. Imagine you’re a trucker and you’ve been driving for the last three hours. You pull into a McDonalds for your break and you grab a burger and fries and a shake. You have the option of a regular shake, which you know you’ll finish by the time you leave. Or you can buy a new “thick shake” which costs more, but which is much slower to drink. Instead of leaving empty handed, you’ll leave with your “thick shake” and you can slowly drink it while you’re on the road. In terms of cost per time getting enjoyment from your shake you know you’re getting a great value.</p>
<h3 id="start-by-validating-your-assumptions_3">Start by validating your assumptions <a class="head_anchor" href="#start-by-validating-your-assumptions_3">#</a>
</h3>
<p>The thick shake idea is actually pretty easy to start testing, because it doesn’t require any additional ingredients. As an MVP I would suggest replacing the original milkshake with only thick shakes on a single trucker route, and seeing if that increases the sales of milkshakes. If that test was positive, I would begin testing the thick shake selectively in other markets (family markets, college towns, etc). If the results still come back favorable, I would begin optimizing the recipe and testing different flavors. Finally I would grow the thick milkshake by running a marketing campaign and introducing it globally (in the countries it makes sense for). And I’d change the name to the the <a href="http://www.mcdonalds.ca/ca/en/menu/full_menu/desserts_shakes/triple_thick_milkshake.html#/">Triple Thick Milkshake</a>. </p>
<h3 id="summary_3">Summary <a class="head_anchor" href="#summary_3">#</a>
</h3>
<ol>
<li>Empathize with the customer
<ul>
<li>Human-Centered Design (HCD)</li>
<li>Customer Personas</li>
<li>Pain Points</li>
<li>Startup</li>
<li>Product-Market Fit</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Align with business strategy
<ul>
<li>Matrix Management</li>
<li>Objectives and Strategies</li>
<li>Product Hierarchy</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Define success
<ul>
<li>One Metric That Matters (OMTM)</li>
<li>Data-driven</li>
<li>A/B test</li>
<li>Draw a Line in the Sand</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Apply the design process
<ul>
<li>Double Diamond Design Process (DDDP)</li>
<li>Brainstorming</li>
<li>Don’t define problems in terms of solutions</li>
<li>Use limitations to inspire creativity</li>
<li>Tradeoffs and Leverage</li>
<li>Vision and User Stories</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Start by validating your assumptions
<ul>
<li>Build-Measure-Learn</li>
<li>Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) </li>
<li>Precedents</li>
<li>Product trajectory</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ol>
<h3 id="sources_3">Sources <a class="head_anchor" href="#sources_3">#</a>
</h3>
<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview-Programming-Questions/dp/098478280X">Cracking the Coding Interview</a></p>
<p><a href="http://jomrcr.svbtle.com/notes-the-design-of-everyday-things">The Design of Everyday Things</a></p>
<p><a href="http://jomrcr.svbtle.com/notes-the-lean-startup">The Lean Startup</a></p>
<p><a href="http://jomrcr.svbtle.com/notes-high-output-management">High Output Management</a></p>
<p><a href="http://jomrcr.svbtle.com/notes-lean-analytics">Lean Analytics</a></p>
<h3 id="examples_3">Examples <a class="head_anchor" href="#examples_3">#</a>
</h3>
<p><a href="https://www.spotify.com/us/running/">Spotify Running</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.mcdonalds.ca/ca/en/menu/full_menu/desserts_shakes/triple_thick_milkshake.html#/">Triple Thick Milkshake</a></p>
<h2 id="thanks-for-reading_2">Thanks for reading :) <a class="head_anchor" href="#thanks-for-reading_2">#</a>
</h2>tag:jomrcr.svbtle.com,2014:Post/idea-opinio2015-11-08T15:22:19-08:002015-11-08T15:22:19-08:00[idea] Opin.io<p>Opin.io is the app for rating anything. </p>
<h3 id="how-does-it-work_3">How does it work? <a class="head_anchor" href="#how-does-it-work_3">#</a>
</h3>
<p>As a user, you open the app to reveal the Rate tab. On the Rate tab you see a personalized and relevant list of things you can rate – the restaurant that you’re nearby, the popular television show that’s on right now, the book that your friend recently rated, the politician that is giving a speech later tonight. You can scroll down to reveal an infinite list of things to rate, or you can use the search bar at the top to find specific things to rate. If you don’t find what you’re looking for, you can add it. </p>
<p>The rating scheme is something I call bump ratings. With a bump rating you don’t necessarily know what the true rating of a thing is, all you can do is bump the rating up or down. The benefit of bump ratings is that they remove a lot of the friction to traditional 5 star or 10 point rating schemes. You don’t need to think about if the restaurant you ate at was a 3 star or a 3.5 star dinner, you just need to ask yourself: did I like or dislike my experience? If you liked the experience a lot, bump the rating twice. </p>
<p>In order to prevent rating inflation, repeat bump ratings can be rate limited: e.g. if you want to bump the rating up three times then you can press the like button twice, but then you have to wait a second (or pay a penny, or even better pay two pennies) before pressing the like button a third time. This way the magnitude of the bump rating scales directly with the amount of effort required to give the rating.</p>
<p>Bump ratings don’t guarantee accurate ratings, but they converge towards accurate ratings through effort and/or repetition. This makes sense statistically. The more passionate you are about something, or the more frequently you interact with something, the more likely that your rating will reflect your true opinion. In other words, as passion and frequency increase, the variance of the rating decreases. </p>
<p>Bump ratings don’t have a maximum or minimum. This means that as passion and frequency increase, the granularity of the rating increases. This makes sense also. Consider your top 100 favorite restaurants. You can probably name the top 25, and you probably know which of the top 25 are also in the top 10. The ordering of these 25 is somewhat important. Now think about the bottom 75 restaurants. You probably can’t name many of them, and their ordering is certainly less important.</p>
<p>All of this makes sense intuitively. Your strong opinion of something is justified either through such an impactful experience that you swallowed the rate limits, or through frequent interactions with that thing. Your favorite restaurant might be a high end affair that you visited in Paris and had a particularly positive experience at. It might also be the local Pho place where you and your coworkers eat lunch at least once a weak. Through either passion, or frequency, or both, these restaurants would have a high rating in the bump rating scheme. Then, due to higher granularity of extreme ratings, you could also start to reasonably determine which restaurant you liked more.</p>
<h3 id="so-what_3">So what? <a class="head_anchor" href="#so-what_3">#</a>
</h3>
<p>The simple act of giving a bump rating provides us with a wealth of information. The most core of that is an interaction log. When a user bumps a rating, either up or down, it provides a signal that a specific user interacted with a specific thing, at a specific time and location. With this information we could build several useful experiences.</p>
<h4 id="memory_4">Memory <a class="head_anchor" href="#memory_4">#</a>
</h4>
<p>How many restaurants have you been to in your life? How many movies have you seen? You probably don’t know. I certainly don’t know. All of that time spent accruing personal experience only to have most of it thrown out because it wasn’t noteworthy enough to take up space in your memory. At the highest level, Opin.io is a way to keep track of what you’ve done, and how you felt about it.</p>
<h4 id="recommendation_4">Recommendation <a class="head_anchor" href="#recommendation_4">#</a>
</h4>
<p>Knowing a user’s interaction history makes Opin.io well placed to make predictions about a user’s interaction future. This will power the relevancy model for realtime rating, but could also power a suggestion model for things that you haven’t done but might want to try. For example, certain views could add a third option, bookmark, for things that users haven’t done yet but might want to remember for the future.</p>
<p>Another powerful use case is using Opin.io as a data aggregation platform to power the recommendations of other apps. For example, when a new user signs up for Netflix they could import their movie preference history from Opin.io. </p>
<h4 id="social_4">Social <a class="head_anchor" href="#social_4">#</a>
</h4>
<p>We know that a person’s preferences are strongly correlated to the preference’s of their friends, which means that social is an important input in the realtime relevancy model. Above and beyond this, people also like to know what their friends are up to. Most of the activity that people do on a day to day basis doesn’t warrant a snap or a tweet, and certainly doesn’t warrant a Facebook post. But as a friend I’m interested in what my friends are doing and how they feel about it. What tv shows are they watching? What books are they reading? Opin.io could be a low friction aggregate of your friends’ day to day life.</p>
<h4 id="trending_4">Trending <a class="head_anchor" href="#trending_4">#</a>
</h4>
<p>Users like knowing what’s going on around them. Is that new Cuban food truck trending up? Maybe figure out where’s it’ll be for lunch. Is The Voice trending down? Maybe don’t bother watching it this week. The realtime nature of Opin.io makes trending a powerful discovery feature. </p>
<p>Trending can also be useful tool from a business perspective. Is your restaurant trending down? Maybe you’ve got a problem. Trending can be useful to businesses as a quick indicator of public opinion.</p>
<h4 id="influence_4">Influence <a class="head_anchor" href="#influence_4">#</a>
</h4>
<p>Each genre has their own group of trendsetters. Trendsetters are noteworthy, because they like liking things first. Their interaction patterns are an early indicator of everyone else’s interaction patterns – what’s going to be popular in the future. Trendsetters are an important targeting group for feedback, as they are the experts in their genre. They can also be used as signal in the relevancy and trending models.</p>
<p>There’s also an opportunity for gamification here, where a user’s influence can be measured and scored. This has the potential to be sticky, but it needs to be well thought out (and better than Foursquare’s mayorships thing).</p>
<h4 id="feedback_4">Feedback <a class="head_anchor" href="#feedback_4">#</a>
</h4>
<p>There are many times when people want to get other people’s opinion about something. This could be an existing thing: “I just finished reading Atlas Shrugged and I want to know what my friends thought of it.” It could also be an new thing: “I just got a new haircut and I want to know if people like it.” Either way, there’s an opportunity for people to request feedback from their friends.</p>
<p>This could also be a valuable feature from a business perspective. Businesses could pay to increase their rank in the relevancy model as a way of getting specific feedback, or more exposure. </p>
<h3 id="what-about-the-chicken-and-egg-problem_3">What about the chicken and egg problem? <a class="head_anchor" href="#what-about-the-chicken-and-egg-problem_3">#</a>
</h3>
<p>The chicken and egg problem is when your product needs data in order to get users, but also needs users in order to get data. Opin.io definitely has a chicken and egg problem, but I think it also has an even subtle problem that I like to think of this as the Netflix problem, because Netflix is really good at recommending me movies that I’ve already seen. The problem is that Netflix doesn’t know that I’ve already seen them, because I watched them before I had Netflix. Opin.io is about helping you maintain accurate opinions, which in a large part consisted of opinions you had before using the app. How do you incorporate the opinion history of a new user?</p>
<p>When possible it makes sense to import that history from existing sources: Facebook, Yelp, Foursquare. In other cases, I think it’s reasonable to take new users through an onboarding process. People like remembering the stuff they like. They also like talking about it. One of the first things we do when we meet new people is see if we have interests in common: “Oh, have you seen the new Bond film? – I thought it was great!” </p>
<p>I can imagine an interactive onboarding process that feels like a conversation: “Do you like to travel? Yes? Have you been to any of these places and did you like them?” Then move on to other topics: “How about sports? Do like any of these sports? Teams? Athletes?” You could also incorporate social data by linking Facebook friends: “Your friend Sam recently liked American Idol. Do you like American Idol also?” </p>
<p>This onboarding process eases the chicken and egg problem, but it also serves an even more powerful objective of customer education. When new users come to Opin.io they won’t understand how to use it. The first goal of the onboarding process should be to teach users to rate often, and without thinking too hard about it. Five star rating schemes rely on a high degree of precision, but bump ratings thrive in scale. Until the action of rating something becomes a habit, this onboarding process (historical opinion vs realtime opinion) could likely be the primary channel for Opin.io to collect data.</p>
<h3 id="intrigued_3">Intrigued? <a class="head_anchor" href="#intrigued_3">#</a>
</h3>
<p>Tweet @jomrcr. </p>
tag:jomrcr.svbtle.com,2014:Post/analysis-hotel-rayman-allan-rayman2015-10-11T01:52:36-07:002015-10-11T01:52:36-07:00[analysis] Hotel Rayman - Allan Rayman<p>Back in August I was listening to Allan Rayman’s <a href="https://player.spotify.com/album/5F2g4vDVLW0bZJlLGoDzcj"><strong><em>Hotel Allan</em></strong></a> about once a day, and now I feel like I need to justify it. So here’s some analysis.</p>
<p><strong><em>Hotel Allan</em></strong> follows the speaker, Allan, as he navigates personal relationships and struggles to “make it” as a professional musician. Although mostly presented in the first-person, <strong><em>Hotel Allan</em></strong> is a self-conscious album. Throughout the story, our protagonist is hyperaware of the destructive patterns in his life and is haunted by the belief that he’s killing everything he loves. This demon follows Allan across several facets of his life, starting with his relationship with his girlfriend, but quickly progressing to his music, and finally his very being.</p>
<p>The first track in the album is <strong><em>Dear Allan</em></strong>, which starts with Allan addressing himself in letter format, and ends with refrains of future songs played over an instrumental that could easily fit as the soundtrack to a nightmare. <strong><em>Dear Allan</em></strong> provides two points of context looking forward. First, <strong><em>Dear Allan</em></strong> establishes the reflective nature of the album, which is useful to keep in mind for when we start reading beyond the literal in later tracks. Despite the plot-driven nature of the album, the events that transpire are actually memories being painfully recalled and rehashed. Second, <strong><em>Dear Allan</em></strong> is grim foreshadowing of what’s to come. Be warned, <strong><em>Hotel Allan</em></strong> is not a happy album, but before we get there we have <strong><em>Kiss</em></strong>.</p>
<p><strong><em>Kiss</em></strong> encapsulates the “falling in love” part of “killing everything that you love”, and the transition from <strong><em>Dear Allan</em></strong> to <strong><em>Kiss</em></strong> is gorgeous. <strong><em>Dear Allan</em></strong> is about using dark foreshadowing to build suspense and tension, but when we hear the first few bars of <strong><em>Kiss</em></strong> that tension bursts like a bubble. <strong><em>Kiss</em></strong> is about pure beautiful release. It’s like sinking back into an armchair after a long day. It’s beautiful.</p>
<p>It’s also a good example of how Allan uses tension to give this album a story-telling cadence. Unlike most “pop” albums, which are structured around song elements (e.g. verses, choruses), Allan uses the rise and fall of tension to give <strong><em>Hotel Allan</em></strong> its drive. In general, Allan builds tension through complex emotions and ambiguity, and resolves tension through simple emotions and clarity. </p>
<p>This is lyrically exhibited in <strong><em>Kiss</em></strong>‘s second verse, what I would argue is the first true rap verse of <strong><em>Hotel Allan</em></strong>. Up until this point, Allan’s verses have been strained, difficult to hear, full of unpredictable line lengths and unusual rhyme schemes. For example, in the first verse of <strong><em>Kiss</em></strong>, Allan is portraying the complicated pre-love feelings of longing and hopelessness: <em>“… it feels like // a suicide // and yesterday // and tonight is the same old thing.”</em> This lack of predictable structure creates tension, which is resolved in the second verse: <em>“The first kiss is // better than the sexiness // I know my death is // beautiful and reckless.”</em> The change in cadence and rhyme scheme is obvious. This verse has clear, predictable structure, and the result is like a drug to your brain. Allan is falling in love. This is a moment of bliss, but even here we can see that Allan is already sowing the seeds of his own destruction. He may be falling in love, but he’s referring to it as his “death” (however beautiful and reckless it is).</p>
<p><strong><em>Kiss</em></strong> is succeeded by <strong><em>Beverley</em></strong>, then <strong><em>Barry Moves</em></strong>, then <strong><em>Graceland</em></strong>, which together encapsulate the full arc of Allan’s relationship with his ex. By the first verse of <strong><em>Graceland</em></strong> they’ve broken up and Allan is in complete despair: <em>“So lonely, so sad So vicious, so mad // Poor me, poor me // Poor me, poor me.”</em> From a literal perspective, this plot arc is pretty cut and dry, but it’s important to remember that Allan is using this album to address a deeper anxiety – namely that he’s killing everything he loves. This brings us to the thematic meat of the album, the second half of <strong><em>Graceland</em></strong>.</p>
<p>The second half of <strong><em>Graceland</em></strong> is distinctly different from what we’ve heard thus far. It is a letter, spoken (not sung), by and from the perspective of his ex. The first words she voices are “Dear Allan”, which harkens back to the first track (and first line) of the album, and hints at the intimate connection between this letter and the album as a whole. She proceeds to ask two telling questions: <em>“Why is it so hard for you to find balance between love and music? // Why does loving me mean the death of you?”</em> These questions are the most explicit deconstruction of the plot that we get. They confirm the breakup arc in <strong><em>Kiss</em></strong>, <strong><em>Beverley</em></strong>, and <strong><em>Barry Moves</em></strong>, but also raise new questions. Why does loving me mean the death you? Who is me? Who is you? Allan’s ex continues…</p>
<p><em>“You told me once that you believed love creates a recipe for death // and I’ve struggled to understand the entrapment that you feel // because I too fear death just as much as anyone else. // Not just in the physical sense of the word // but in the idea of what death represents // dreams and aspirations becoming finite.”</em></p>
<p>Allan’s ex refers back to a time before the breakup, indicating that Allan’s preoccupation with death is not something new. This forces us to extend our previous interpretation of the album, allowing us to see new subtlety in the pre-existing plot. For example, in <strong><em>Barry Moves</em></strong> Allan says: <em>“I only love one thing // and, goddamn, it’s a melody.”</em> On first listen we assume he’s referring to the “spiral of death” effect preceding the breakup. As his relationship became more of a struggle, Allan found solace in his music, which in turn put more strain on his relationship. With the context of <strong><em>Graceland</em></strong> in mind, however, we see that Allan might not be referring to his relationship struggle at all in this passage. Instead, he might be referring to the creative struggle of being a professional musician and having to share his art with the world. In many ways, this act of sharing is a kind of death. Once a song is released to the public, it becomes fixed in society. It can no longer grow or be modified freely; it is chained by its own expectation. From this perspective, the entire plot can be seen throughout the somewhat meta lens of Allan breaking up with the music he’s created for the album. As he crafts his music he falls in love with it, but like a mother bird he knows there will come a time when he must let his music out of the nest. To Allan, this is akin to killing it. </p>
<p>This takes an even darker turn in <strong><em>27</em></strong>. We’ve seen how personal the music on <strong><em>Hotel Allan</em></strong> is. Allan Rayman, as an author, does not try to hide the fact that he himself is the subject of much of his music. In some ways, we could even go as far as to say he <em>is</em> his music. As an artist, he is the culmination of all the thought and effort that goes into creating his work. His most grand piece of artistic output is himself. And if Allan believes he is killing his music, then the implication is that Allan is also killing himself: <em>“With all my idols gone // Oh, I’m afraid of 27.”</em> The “27” here refers to the 27 Club, a group of prominent musicians (Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain) that died at the age of 27, usually for drug or suicide related reasons. Allan sees his life heading in a similar direction, and the result scares him. </p>
<p>Musically, <strong><em>27</em></strong> is probably the hardest hitting track on <strong><em>Hotel Allan</em></strong>. It veers wildly from somber piano to angry, beat-driven vocals. It simultaneously lashes out at the world, and begs for help: <em>“I may have done some shit // Weathered me as a man // Couple nights, wide awake // Got some pills in my hand.”</em> Allan is out of control. He’s so wrapped up in his own metaphor that it’s starting to overwhelm him, and he compensates by turning to different forms of escape: sleeping, drinking, and taking drugs. He’s terrified of taking the final form of escape, suicide, but instead holds on to the cryptic refrain: <em>“Need a selfish kind of girl // Need a selfish kind of girl, god damn.”</em> </p>
<p>After all this negative emotion, we get a welcome reprieve in the form of <strong><em>Song 512</em></strong>. <strong><em>Song 512</em></strong> is the counterpoint to <strong><em>27</em></strong>, where Allan is able to speak coherently and rationally about his life. The “512” refers to the area code of Allan’s hometown, Toronto, and this place of familiarity is reflected in the tone of <strong><em>Song 512</em></strong>. Allan is speaking from a safe place, and he can be honest about his lifestyle. He doesn’t glamorize it, but he comes to terms with the price he’s had to pay in becoming a musician, namely loneliness: <em>“Now all my love is an empty glass // I drink alone, I found love at last.”</em> As we’ve seen previously, Allan’s loneliness is a byproduct of killing the things he loves: his relationships, his music, and himself. In <strong><em>Song 512</em></strong>, it feels like Allan is able to reconcile the first two, and in doing so steps back from the ledge of the third: <em>“Light, camera, action, I’m the boy right now // So watch the boy grow up.”</em> Allan is accepting the role of lead actor in his own life, and even if he isn’t thrilled by the prospect, it’s still a big step up from suicidal. </p>
<p><strong><em>Alabama’s Song</em></strong> and <strong><em>Tennessee</em></strong> give us our final hit of unsatisfying resolution. <strong><em>Alabama’s Song</em></strong> is a framed story, offering a high level summation of the album: Allan hasn’t overcome his demons, but he’s fought them and lived to fight another day. In <strong><em>Tennessee</em></strong> he’s running: <em>“And don’t follow me // I don’t see eye to eye with society // And I’m a lost boy, forever young // Don’t expect an apology.”</em> This album does not mark a clean transition in Allan’s life. He’s still carrying a lot of the baggage he was holding at the beginning of the album, and he acknowledges this with the reference to Peter Pan’s “lost boys”. Despite this, I think he has grown up, at least a little. After an emotional rollercoaster, Allan has come out alive, and with enough stability to push forward in his life. Most hopeful is the refrain: <em>“My girl, she loves me still // She loves me still // And I don’t know, I don’t know // I don’t know why.”</em> We could interpret this pessimistically. “She” is the most literal embodiment of his demons, and her continuing love for him means that he hasn’t yet escaped the tension that this brings to his life. As he says in the refrain from <strong><em>27</em></strong>: <em>“Need a selfish kind of girl // Need a selfish kind of girl, god damn.”</em> But Allan doesn’t need a selfish kind of girl. Allan’s music is beautiful, and intricate, and what he needs to do is keep sharing it. He needs a forgiving kind of girl. One that loves him even though he doesn’t know why.</p>
<p>The album concludes with <strong><em>M. Roadhouse</em></strong>, a farewell and a hint of what’s to come. Allan is still running, still recovering, but can feel his demons catching up. He’s preparing for the next encounter: <em>“He starts production on his Roadhouse film // He’s under budget, at a casting standstill // He’s got his beat-up Ford pickup // plans to shoot on film // Presenting Mr. Roadhouse.”</em> Allan, I hope you’re really ready for it.</p>
tag:jomrcr.svbtle.com,2014:Post/new-music-roundup-7202015-07-20T13:08:12-07:002015-07-20T13:08:12-07:00[mathNEWS] New Music Roundup (7/20)<h4 id="1-don39t-say-no-cheat-codes-feat-dresses_4">1. Don’t Say No - Cheat Codes feat Dresses <a class="head_anchor" href="#1-don39t-say-no-cheat-codes-feat-dresses_4">#</a>
</h4>
<p>Dresses is an indie pop duo from Portland and Cheat Codes is an electro pop trio from LA. Don’t Say No sounds exactly like what you think it sounds like.</p>
<h4 id="2-look-outside-nat-amp-alex-wolff_4">2. Look Outside - Nat & Alex Wolff <a class="head_anchor" href="#2-look-outside-nat-amp-alex-wolff_4">#</a>
</h4>
<p>Look Outside is off the soundtrack to to Paper Towns, which is a movie I had not heard about until today. This song makes the list because I think that as we head towards finals we should keep in mind the refrain in the chorus: “It’s not so bad. It’s alright.”</p>
<h4 id="3-this-isn39t-the-end-owl-city_4">3. This Isn’t The End - Owl City <a class="head_anchor" href="#3-this-isn39t-the-end-owl-city_4">#</a>
</h4>
<p>Owl City released his fifth album, Mobile Orchestra, last week. It’s bad. Just though you all should know.</p>
<h4 id="4-stockholm-atlas-genius_4">4. Stockholm - Atlas Genius <a class="head_anchor" href="#4-stockholm-atlas-genius_4">#</a>
</h4>
<p>Stockholm is the lead off Atlas Genius’s new album, Inanimate Objects, coming out August 28th. I’m exited.</p>
<h4 id="5-seventeen-sjowgren_4">5. Seventeen - Sjowgren <a class="head_anchor" href="#5-seventeen-sjowgren_4">#</a>
</h4>
<p>Sjowgren has a HAIM style girl power rock vibe (though I should note that I couldn’t find much information about Sjowgren online, so I don’t know if they actually are a girl rock band), and Seventeen is a solid track with the right amount of low-fi to make it perfect for listening to outdoors on a summer afternoon. Listen to the harmonies in the pre-chorus. They’re exquisite.</p>
<p>*These tracks and others from past issues can be found on the Spotify playlist titled mathNEWS.</p>
<p>[flustered]</p>
tag:jomrcr.svbtle.com,2014:Post/new-music-roundup-762015-07-06T11:19:14-07:002015-07-06T11:19:14-07:00[mathNEWS] New Music Roundup (7/6)<p>If you’re a fan of music like the 1975, then this week is good for you. Lots of tracks in this list come in a similar vein.</p>
<h4 id="1-abrasive-ratatat_4">1. Abrasive - Ratatat <a class="head_anchor" href="#1-abrasive-ratatat_4">#</a>
</h4>
<p>New Ratatat album <em>Magnifique</em> coming out July 17th. Need I say more?</p>
<h4 id="2-tell-me-what-you-want-from-me-good-old-war_4">2. Tell Me What You Want From Me - Good Old War <a class="head_anchor" href="#2-tell-me-what-you-want-from-me-good-old-war_4">#</a>
</h4>
<p>Good Old War’s latest album <em>Broken Into Better Shape</em> was released last week. Much like the album, the lead track, Tell Me What You Want From Me, is optimistic and approachable despite an angsty title.</p>
<h4 id="3-xyampo-low-tide_4">3. XY&O - Low Tide <a class="head_anchor" href="#3-xyampo-low-tide_4">#</a>
</h4>
<p>XY&O only has one song on Spotify, but it’s a good start. Low Tide fits right in the genre niche formed by bands like the 1975 and Smallpools, but bewarned it’s not a jam. It’s more of a playlist filler type song (in the best possible way).</p>
<h4 id="4-galaxy-rider-voyageur_4">4. Galaxy Rider - Voyageur <a class="head_anchor" href="#4-galaxy-rider-voyageur_4">#</a>
</h4>
<p>Galaxy Rider has less than 15k plays on Spotify, but I think it’s beautiful. The chorus is cringingly high, and the lyrics are immature, but the result is raw and delicate, like watching your younger sister perform in the elementary school play. Galaxy Rider feels like it’s on the edge of breaking, but hasn’t yet because it doesn’t know what breaking is.</p>
<h4 id="5-eye-to-eye-astronauts-etc_4">5. Eye to Eye - Astronauts, Etc. <a class="head_anchor" href="#5-eye-to-eye-astronauts-etc_4">#</a>
</h4>
<p>Eye to Eye fits into the same genre niche as Low Tide, but with deeper lyrics and more intricate instrumentation. The song is about the mix of tension and timidity in the lead up to a difficult conversation, which the guitar mirrors by straying between the drums (which increase the pace) and the keys (which are fighting to bring the pace down).</p>
<p>*These tracks and others from past issues can be found on the Spotify playlist titled mathNEWS.</p>
<p>[flustered]</p>
tag:jomrcr.svbtle.com,2014:Post/notes-crucial-conversations2015-07-01T09:15:54-07:002015-07-01T09:15:54-07:00[notes] Crucial Conversations<h1 id="crucial-conversations-tools-for-talking-when_1">Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High (2002) by Kerry Patterson and Joseph Grenny <a class="head_anchor" href="#crucial-conversations-tools-for-talking-when_1">#</a>
</h1>
<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Conversations-Tools-Talking-Stakes/dp/0071401946/">Buy from Amazon</a></p>
<h2 id="ch-1-what39s-a-crucial-conversation-and-who-c_2">CH. 1: What’s a Crucial Conversation? And Who Cares? <a class="head_anchor" href="#ch-1-what39s-a-crucial-conversation-and-who-c_2">#</a>
</h2>
<p>“Now, what makes one of your conversations crucial as opposed to plain vanilla? First, opinions vary… Second, stakes are high… Third, emotions run strong.”</p>
<p>“When conversations matter the most-that is, when conversations move from casual to crucial-we’re generally on our worst behavior. Why is that? We’re designed wrong. When conversations turn from routine to crucial, we’re often in trouble. That’s because emotions don’t exactly prepare us to converse effectively. Countless generations of genetic shaping drive humans to handle crucial conversations with flying fists and fleet feet, not intelligent persuasion and gentle attentiveness.”</p>
<p>“We’re under pressure. Let’s add another factor. Crucial conversations are frequently spontaneous. More often than not, they come out of nowhere. And since you’re caught by surprise, you’re forced to conduct an extraordinarily complex human interaction in real time”</p>
<h2 id="ch-2-mastering-crucial-conversations-the-powe_2">CH. 2: Mastering Crucial Conversations (The Power of Dialogue) <a class="head_anchor" href="#ch-2-mastering-crucial-conversations-the-powe_2">#</a>
</h2>
<p>“When it comes to risky, controversial, and emotional conversations, skilled people find a way to get all relevant information (from themselves and others) out into the open.”</p>
<p>“People who are skilled at dialogue do their best to make it safe for everyone to add their meaning to the shared pool – even ideas that at first glance appear controversial, wrong, or at odds with their own beliefs.”</p>
<h2 id="ch-3-start-with-heart-how-to-stay-focused-on_2">CH. 3: Start with Heart (How to Stay Focused on What You Really Want) <a class="head_anchor" href="#ch-3-start-with-heart-how-to-stay-focused-on_2">#</a>
</h2>
<p>“More often than not, we do something to contribute to the problems we’re experiencing. People who are best at dialogue understand this simple fact and turn it into the principle <strong>Work on me first.</strong>”</p>
<p>“They maintain this focus in two ways. First, they’re steely-eyed smart when it comes to knowing what they want. Despite constant invitations to slip away from their goals, they stick with them. Second, skilled people don’t make Sucker’s Choices (either/or choices). Unlike others who justify their unhealthy behavior by explaining that they had no choice but to fight or take flight, the dialogue-smart believe that dialogue, no matter the circumstances, is always an option.”</p>
<h4 id="focus-on-what-you-really-want_4">Focus on What You Really Want <a class="head_anchor" href="#focus-on-what-you-really-want_4">#</a>
</h4>
<p>“In order to move back to motives that allow for dialogue, you must step away from the interaction and look at yourself much like an outsider. Ask yourself: <strong>What am I doing, and if I had to guess, what does it tell me about my underlying motive?</strong>”</p>
<p>“Once you call into question the shifting desires of your heart, you can make conscious choices to change them.”</p>
<p>“ Once you’ve asked yourself what you want, add one more equally telling question: <strong>How would I behave if I really wanted these results?</strong>”</p>
<h3 id="common-deviations_3">Common Deviations <a class="head_anchor" href="#common-deviations_3">#</a>
</h3>
<ul>
<li>Wanting to win</li>
<li>Seeking revenge</li>
<li>Hoping to remain safe</li>
</ul>
<h4 id="refuse-the-sucker39s-choice_4">Refuse the Sucker’s Choice <a class="head_anchor" href="#refuse-the-sucker39s-choice_4">#</a>
</h4>
<p>“Those offering up a Sucker’s Choice either don’t think of a third (and healthy) option-in which case it’s an honest but tragic mistake-or set up the false dichotomy as a way of justifying their unattractive actions.”</p>
<p>“The best at dialogue refuse Sucker’s Choices by setting up new choices.”</p>
<ol>
<li>First, clarify what you really want.</li>
<li>Second, clarify what you really don’t want.</li>
<li>Third, present your brain with a more complex problem.</li>
</ol>
<h2 id="ch-4-learn-to-look-how-to-notice-when-safety_2">CH. 4: Learn to Look (How to Notice When Safety Is at Risk) <a class="head_anchor" href="#ch-4-learn-to-look-how-to-notice-when-safety_2">#</a>
</h2><h4 id="learn-to-spot-crucial-conversations_4">Learn to Spot Crucial Conversations <a class="head_anchor" href="#learn-to-spot-crucial-conversations_4">#</a>
</h4>
<p>“First, stay alert for the moment a conversation turns from a routine or harmless discussion into a crucial one. In a similar vein, as you anticipate entering a tough conversation, pay heed to the fact that you’re about to enter the danger zone.”</p>
<p>“Think about what happens to your body when conversations get tough. Everyone is a little bit different. What are your cues?”</p>
<h4 id="learn-to-look-for-safety-problems_4">Learn to Look for Safety Problems <a class="head_anchor" href="#learn-to-look-for-safety-problems_4">#</a>
</h4>
<p>“People who are gifted at dialogue keep a constant vigil on safety. They pay attention to the content-that’s a given-and they watch for signs that people are afraid. When friends, loved ones, or colleagues move away from healthy dialogue (freely adding to the pool of meaning)-either forcing their opinions into the pool or purposefully keeping their ideas out of the pool they immediately turn their attention to whether or not others feel safe.”</p>
<p>“As people begin to feel unsafe, they start down one of two unhealthy paths. They move either to <strong>silence</strong> (withholding mean ing from the pool) or to <strong>violence</strong> (trying to force meaning in the pool).”</p>
<p>“The three most common forms of silence are masking. avoiding, and withdrawing.”</p>
<p>“<strong>Masking</strong> consists of understating or selectively showing our true opinions. Sarcasm, sugarcoating, and couching are some of the more popular forms.”</p>
<p>“<strong>Avoiding</strong> involves steering completely away from sensitive subjects.”</p>
<p>“<strong>Withdrawing</strong> means pulling out of a conversation altogether.”</p>
<p>“Violence consists of any verbal strategy that attempts to convince, control, or compel others to your point of view.”</p>
<p>“<strong>Controlling</strong> consists of coercing others to your way of thinking. It’s done through either forcing your views on others or dominating the conversation. Methods include cutting others off, overstating your facts, speaking in absolutes, changing subjects, or using directive questions to control the conversation.”</p>
<p>“<strong>Labeling</strong> is putting a label on people or ideas so we can dis miss them under a general stereotype or category.”</p>
<p>“<strong>Attacking</strong> speaks for itself. You’ve moved from winning the argument to making the person suffer.”</p>
<h2 id="ch-5-make-it-safe-how-to-make-it-safe-to-talk_2">CH. 5: Make It Safe (How to Make It Safe to Talk about Almost Anything) <a class="head_anchor" href="#ch-5-make-it-safe-how-to-make-it-safe-to-talk_2">#</a>
</h2>
<p>“The first step to building more safety is to understand which of the two conditions of safety is at risk.”</p>
<h4 id="mutual-purpose_4">Mutual Purpose <a class="head_anchor" href="#mutual-purpose_4">#</a>
</h4>
<p>“Mutual Purpose means that others perceive that we are working toward a common outcome in the conversation, that we care about their goals, interests, and values. And vice versa. We believe they care about ours.”</p>
<p>“Crucial conversations often go awry not because of the content of the conversation, but because others believe that the painful and pointed content means that you have a malicious intent.”</p>
<h4 id="mutual-respect_4">Mutual Respect <a class="head_anchor" href="#mutual-respect_4">#</a>
</h4>
<p>“Mutual Respect is the continuance condition of dialogue. As people perceive that others don’t respect them, the conversation immediately becomes unsafe and dialogue comes to a screeching halt.”</p>
<p>“Telltale signs. To spot when respect is violated and safety takes a turn south, watch for signs that people are defending their dignity. Emotions are the key. When people feel disrespected, they become highly charged.”</p>
<h3 id="what-to-do-once-you-step-out_3">What To Do Once You Step Out <a class="head_anchor" href="#what-to-do-once-you-step-out_3">#</a>
</h3>
<p>We’ve shared a few modest ideas (mostly things to avoid), so let’s get into three hard-hitting skills that the best at dialogue use:</p>
<ul>
<li>Apologize When Appropriate</li>
<li>Contrast to Fix Misunderstanding
<ul>
<li>Don’t/Do statement</li>
<li>Contrasting is not apologizing</li>
<li>Contrasting provides context and proportion</li>
<li>Use Contrasting for prevention or first aid</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>CRIB To Get To Mutual Purpose
<ul>
<li>Commit to Seek Mutual Purpose</li>
<li>Recognize the Purpose behind the Strategy</li>
<li>Invent a Mutual Purpose
<ul>
<li>To invent a Mutual Purpose, move to more encompassing goals.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Brainstorm New Strategies</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="ch-6-master-my-stories-how-to-stay-in-dialogu_2">CH. 6: Master My Stories (How to Stay in Dialogue When You'reAngry, Scared, or Hurt) <a class="head_anchor" href="#ch-6-master-my-stories-how-to-stay-in-dialogu_2">#</a>
</h2><h3 id="emotions-don39t-just-happen_3">Emotions Don’t Just Happen <a class="head_anchor" href="#emotions-don39t-just-happen_3">#</a>
</h3>
<p>“Claim One. Emotions don’t settle upon you like a fog. They are not foisted upon you by others. No matter how comfortable it might make you feel saying it-others don’t make you mad. You make you mad. You and only you create your emotions.”</p>
<p>“Claim Two. Once you’ve created your emotions, you have only two options: You can act on them or be acted on by them. That is, when it comes to strong emotions, you either find a way to master them or fall hostage to them.”</p>
<h3 id="stories-create-feelings_3">Stories Create Feelings <a class="head_anchor" href="#stories-create-feelings_3">#</a>
</h3>
<p>“Just after we observe what others do and just before we feel some emotion about it, we tell ourselves a story. That is, we add meaning to the action we observed. To the simple behavior we add motive. Why were they doing that? We also add judgment-is that good or bad? And then, based on these thoughts or stories, our body responds with an emotion.”</p>
<p>“If we take control of our stories, they won’t control us.”</p>
<h4 id="retrace-your-path_4">Retrace Your Path <a class="head_anchor" href="#retrace-your-path_4">#</a>
</h4>
<ol>
<li>Am I in some form of silence or violence?</li>
<li>What emotions are encouraging me to act this way?</li>
<li>What story is creating these emotions?
<ul>
<li>Watch for Victim, Villain, and Helpless Stories.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>What evidence do I have to support this story? (Get back to the facts.)</li>
</ol>
<h4 id="tell-the-rest-of-the-story_4">Tell the Rest of the Story <a class="head_anchor" href="#tell-the-rest-of-the-story_4">#</a>
</h4>
<ul>
<li>Am I pretending not to notice my role in the problem?</li>
<li>Why would a reasonable, rational, and decent person do this?</li>
<li>What do I really want?</li>
<li>What would I do right now if I really wanted these results?</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="ch-7-state-my-path-how-to-speak-persuasively_2">CH. 7: STATE My Path (How to Speak Persuasively, Not Abrasively) <a class="head_anchor" href="#ch-7-state-my-path-how-to-speak-persuasively_2">#</a>
</h2><h3 id="maintain-safety_3">Maintain Safety <a class="head_anchor" href="#maintain-safety_3">#</a>
</h3>
<p>“People who are skilled at dialogue have the <strong>confidence</strong> to say what needs to be said to the person who needs to hear it.”</p>
<p>“Skilled people are <strong>humble</strong> enough to realize that they don’t have a monopoly on the truth.”</p>
<h4 id="state-your-path_4">STATE Your Path <a class="head_anchor" href="#state-your-path_4">#</a>
</h4>
<ul>
<li>Share your facts
<ul>
<li>Facts are the least controversial. Facts provide a safe beginning.</li>
<li>Facts are the most persuasive.</li>
<li>Facts are the least insulting. Your story (particularly if it has led to a rather ugly conclusion) could easily surprise and insult others.</li>
<li>Begin your path with facts.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Tell your story
<ul>
<li>As you share your story, watch for signs that safety is deteriorating.</li>
<li>If people start becoming defensive or appear to be insulted, step out of the conversation and rebuild safety by Contrasting.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Ask for others’ paths</li>
<li>Talk tentatively
<ul>
<li>Share in a way that expresses appropriate confidence in your conclusions while demonstrating that, if appropriate, you want your conclusions challenged.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Encourage testing
<ul>
<li>Invite opposing views.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="ch-8-explore-others39-paths-how-to-listen-whe_2">CH. 8: Explore Others’ Paths (How to Listen When Others Blow Up or Clam Up) <a class="head_anchor" href="#ch-8-explore-others39-paths-how-to-listen-whe_2">#</a>
</h2>
<p>“To encourage others to share their paths we’ll use four power listening tools that can help make it safe for other people to speak frankly.”</p>
<ul>
<li>Ask to Get Things Rolling</li>
<li>Mirror to Confirm Feelings</li>
<li>Paraphrase to Acknowledge the Story</li>
<li>Prime When You’re Getting Nowhere</li>
</ul>
<p>“<strong>Agree</strong> when you agree. <strong>Build</strong> when others leave out key pieces. <strong>Compare</strong> when you differ.”</p>
<ul>
<li>Most arguments consist of battles over the 5 to 1 0 percent of the facts and stories that people disagree over. And while it’s true that people eventually need to work through differences, you shouldn’t start there. Start with an area of agreement.</li>
<li>Point out areas of agreement and then add elements that were left out of the discussion.</li>
<li>When you do differ significantly, don’t suggest others are wrong. Compare your two views.</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="ch-9-move-to-action-how-to-turn-crucial-conve_2">CH. 9: Move to Action (How to Turn Crucial Conversations into Action and Results) <a class="head_anchor" href="#ch-9-move-to-action-how-to-turn-crucial-conve_2">#</a>
</h2><h4 id="decide-how-to-decide_4">Decide How To Decide <a class="head_anchor" href="#decide-how-to-decide_4">#</a>
</h4>
<ul>
<li>
<strong>Command</strong>: Decisions are made without involving others.</li>
<li>
<strong>Consult</strong>: Input is gathered from the group and then a subset decides.</li>
<li>
<strong>Vote</strong>: An agreed-upon percentage swings the decision.</li>
<li>
<strong>Consensus</strong>: Everyone comes to an agreement and then supports the final decision.</li>
</ul>
<p>“Determine <em>who</em> does <em>what</em> by <em>when</em>. Make the deliverables crystal clear. Set a <em>follow-up</em> time.”</p>
<h2 id="ch-10-putting-it-all-together-tools-for-prepa_2">CH. 10: Putting It All Together (Tools for Preparing and Learning) <a class="head_anchor" href="#ch-10-putting-it-all-together-tools-for-prepa_2">#</a>
</h2><h2 id="ch-11-yeah-but-advice-for-tough-cases_2">CH. 11: Yeah, But (Advice for Tough Cases) <a class="head_anchor" href="#ch-11-yeah-but-advice-for-tough-cases_2">#</a>
</h2><h2 id="ch-12-change-your-life-how-to-turn-ideas-into_2">CH. 12: Change Your Life (How to Turn Ideas into Habits) <a class="head_anchor" href="#ch-12-change-your-life-how-to-turn-ideas-into_2">#</a>
</h2>tag:jomrcr.svbtle.com,2014:Post/notes-the-power-of-habit2015-06-30T14:16:01-07:002015-06-30T14:16:01-07:00[notes] The Power of Habit<h1 id="the-power-of-habit-why-we-do-what-we-do-in-li_1">The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business (2014) by Charles Duhigg <a class="head_anchor" href="#the-power-of-habit-why-we-do-what-we-do-in-li_1">#</a>
</h1>
<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Power-Habit-What-Life-Business/dp/081298160X/">Buy from Amazon</a></p>
<h5 id="part-one-the-habits-of-individual_5">Part One: The Habits of Individual <a class="head_anchor" href="#part-one-the-habits-of-individual_5">#</a>
</h5><h2 id="1-the-habit-loop-how-habits-work_2">1. The Habit Loop (How Habits Work) <a class="head_anchor" href="#1-the-habit-loop-how-habits-work_2">#</a>
</h2>
<p>The Habit Loop: Cue, Routine, Reward</p>
<p>“This process within our brains is a three-step loop. First there is a cue, a trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to use. Then there is the routine, which can be physical or mental or emotional. Finally, there is a reward, which helps your brain figure out if this particular loop is worth remembering for the future.”</p>
<h2 id="2-the-craving-brain-how-to-create-new-habits_2">2. The Craving Brain (How to Create New Habits) <a class="head_anchor" href="#2-the-craving-brain-how-to-create-new-habits_2">#</a>
</h2>
<p>“This explains why habits are so powerful: They create neurological cravings. Most of the time, these cravings emerge so gradually that we’re not really aware they exist, so we’re often blind to their influence. But as we associate cues with certain rewards, a subconscious craving emerges in our brains that starts the habit loop spinning.”</p>
<p>“This is how new habits are created: by putting together a cue, a routine, and a reward, and then cultivating a craving that drives the loop.”</p>
<h2 id="3-the-golden-rule-of-habit-change-why-transfo_2">3. The Golden Rule of Habit Change (Why Transformation Occurs) <a class="head_anchor" href="#3-the-golden-rule-of-habit-change-why-transfo_2">#</a>
</h2>
<p>“We know that a habit cannot be eradicated – it must, instead, be replaced. And we know that habits are most malleable when the Golden Rule of habit change is applied: If we keep the same cue and the same reward, a new routine can be inserted. But that’s now enough. For a habit to stay changed, people must believe change is possible. And most often, that belief only emerges with the help of a group.”</p>
<h5 id="part-two-the-habits-of-successful-organizatio_5">Part Two: The Habits of Successful Organizations <a class="head_anchor" href="#part-two-the-habits-of-successful-organizatio_5">#</a>
</h5><h2 id="4-keystone-habits-which-habits-matter-most_2">4. Keystone Habits (Which Habits Matter Most) <a class="head_anchor" href="#4-keystone-habits-which-habits-matter-most_2">#</a>
</h2>
<p>“Small wins are exactly what they sound like, and are part of how keystone habits create widespread changes.”</p>
<h2 id="5-starbucks-and-the-habit-of-success_2">5. Starbucks and the Habit of Success <a class="head_anchor" href="#5-starbucks-and-the-habit-of-success_2">#</a>
</h2>
<p>Marshmallow experiment conducted at Stanford in 1960’s:</p>
<ul>
<li>Told four year olds they could either have one marshmallow now, or two later</li>
<li>Followed the kids into the future</li>
<li>The kids that took two marshmallows later option turned out more successful</li>
<li>One of the first tests in willpower.</li>
</ul>
<p>“Willpower isn’t just a skill. It’s a muscle, like the muscles in your arms or legs, and it gets tired as it works harder, so there’s less power left over for other things… If you use it up too early on tedious tasks like writing emails or filling out complicated and boring expense forms, all the strength will be gone by the time you get home.”</p>
<h2 id="6-the-power-of-a-crisis-how-leaders-create-ha_2">6. The Power of a Crisis (How Leaders Create Habits Through Accident and Design) <a class="head_anchor" href="#6-the-power-of-a-crisis-how-leaders-create-ha_2">#</a>
</h2>
<p><em>An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change</em> (1982) by Yale professors Richard Nelson and Sidney Winter:<br>
“Much of a firm’s behavior is best understood as a reflection of general habits and strategic orientations coming from the firm’s past,” rather than “the result of a detailed survey of the remote twigs of the decision tree.”</p>
<p>“These organizational habits – or routines, as Nelson and Winter called them – are enormously important, because without them, most companies would never get any work done. Routines provide the hundreds of unwritten rules that companies need to operate. They allow workers to experiment with new ideas without having to ask for permission at every step. They provide a kind of "organizational memory”, so that managers don’t have to reinvent the sales process every six months or panic each time a VP quits.“</p>
<p>"Organizational habits offer a basic promise: If you follow the established patterns and abide by the truce, then rivalries won’t destroy the company, the profits will roll in, and, eventually, everyone will get rich.”</p>
<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/ucqh3pylgpworq.png"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/ucqh3pylgpworq_small.png" alt="work habits.png"></a></p>
<p>“Good leaders seize crises to remake organizational habits.”</p>
<h2 id="7-how-target-knows-what-you-want-before-you-d_2">7. How Target Knows What You Want Before You Do (When Companies Predict and Manipulate Habits) <a class="head_anchor" href="#7-how-target-knows-what-you-want-before-you-d_2">#</a>
</h2>
<p>“Andreasen wanted to know why these people had deviated from their usual [shopping] patterns. What he discovered has become a pillar of modern marketing theory: People’s buying habits are more likely to change when they go through a major life event.”</p>
<p>“One night, Meyer sat down and started listening to a bunch of sticky songs in a row, one right after the other, over and over again. As he did, he started to notice a similarity among them. It wasn’t that the songs sounded alike. Some of them were ballads, other were pop tunes. However, they all seemed similar in that each sounded exactly like what Meyer expected to hear from that particular genre. They sounded familiar.”</p>
<p>“Our brains crave familiarity in music because familiarity is how we manage to hear without becoming distracted by all the sound. Just as the scientists at MIT discovered that behavioral habits prevent us from becoming overwhelmed by the endless decisions we would otherwise have to make each day.”</p>
<p>“That’s why songs that sound "familiar” – even if you’ve never heard them before – are sticky.“</p>
<p>"DJ’s starting making sure that whenever "Hey Ya!” was played, it was sandwiched between songs that were already popular.“</p>
<h5 id="part-three-the-habits-of-societies_5">Part Three: The Habits of Societies <a class="head_anchor" href="#part-three-the-habits-of-societies_5">#</a>
</h5><h2 id="8-saddleback-church-and-the-montgomery-bus-bo_2">8. Saddleback Church and the Montgomery Bus Boycott (How Movements Happen) <a class="head_anchor" href="#8-saddleback-church-and-the-montgomery-bus-bo_2">#</a>
</h2>
<p>"When sociologists have examined how opinions move through communities, how gossip spreads or political movements start, they’ve discovered a common pattern: Our weak-tie acquaintances are often as influential – if not more – than our close-tie friends.”</p>
<p>“Individuals with few weak ties will be deprived of information from distant parts of the social system… and may be difficult to organize or integrate into political movements of any kind. While members of one of two cliques may be efficiently recruited, the problem is that, without weak ties, any momentum generated int his way does not spread beyond the clique. As a result most of the population will be untouched.”</p>
<h2 id="9-the-neurology-of-free-will-are-we-responsib_2">9. The Neurology of Free Will (Are We Responsible for Our Habits?) <a class="head_anchor" href="#9-the-neurology-of-free-will-are-we-responsib_2">#</a>
</h2><h2 id="appendix_2">APPENDIX <a class="head_anchor" href="#appendix_2">#</a>
</h2>
<p>The Framework:</p>
<ol>
<li>Identify the routine</li>
<li>Experiment with rewards</li>
<li>Isolate the cue</li>
<li>Have a plan</li>
</ol>
<h3 id="1-identify-the-routine_3">1. Identify the Routine <a class="head_anchor" href="#1-identify-the-routine_3">#</a>
</h3>
<p>“To understand your own habits, you need to identify the components of you loops. Once you have diagnosed the habit loop of a particular behavior, you can look for ways to supplant old vices with new routines.”</p>
<h3 id="2-experiment-with-rewards_3">2. Experiment with Rewards <a class="head_anchor" href="#2-experiment-with-rewards_3">#</a>
</h3>
<p>“Rewards are powerful because they satisfy cravings. But we’re often not conscious of the cravings that drive our behaviors.”</p>
<p>“To figure out which cravings are driving particular habits, it’s useful to experiment with different rewards. This might take a few days, or a week, or longer. During that period, you shouldn’t feel any pressure to make a real change – thinking of yourself as a scientist in the data collection stage.”</p>
<p>“As you test four or five different rewards, you can use an old trick to look for patterns: After each activity, jot down on a piece of paper the first three things that come to mind when you get back to your desk.”</p>
<p>“Then, set an alarm on your watch or computer for fifteen minutes. When it goes off, ask yourself: Do you still feel the urge for that cookie.”</p>
<p>“And why the fifteen-minute alarm? Because the point of these tests is to determine the reward you’re craving. If, fifteen minutes after eating a donut, you still feel an urge to get up and go to the cafeteria, then your habit isn’t motivated by a sugar craving. If, after gossiping at a colleague’s desk, you still want a cookie, then the need for human contact isn’t what’s driving your behavior.”</p>
<p>“By experimenting with different rewards, you can isolate what you are actually craving, which is essential in redesigning the habit.”</p>
<h3 id="3-isolate-the-cue_3">3. Isolate the Cue <a class="head_anchor" href="#3-isolate-the-cue_3">#</a>
</h3>
<p>“To identify a cue amid the noise, we can… identify categories of behaviors ahead of time in order to see patterns. Experiments have shown that almost all habitual cues fit into one of five categories: Location, Time, Emotional state, Other people, Immediately preceding action.”</p>
<h3 id="4-have-a-plan_3">4. Have A Plan <a class="head_anchor" href="#4-have-a-plan_3">#</a>
</h3>
<p>“Once you’ve figured out your habit loop – you’ve identified the reward driving your behavior, the cue triggering it, and the routine itself – you can begin to shift the behavior. You can change to a better routine by planning for the cue and choosing a behavior that delivers the reward you are craving. What you need is a plan.”</p>
tag:jomrcr.svbtle.com,2014:Post/new-music-roundup-6222015-06-22T20:13:12-07:002015-06-22T20:13:12-07:00[mathNEWS] New Music Roundup (6/22)<p>Pretty good two weeks for new music. The highlights are definitely Overflow and Re.Up, but Rumble in the Park and Daye Jack have enough intrigue to warrant a listen, and it’s hard to be unhappy with anything RAC does.</p>
<h4 id="1-back-of-the-car-rac_4">1. Back of the Car - RAC <a class="head_anchor" href="#1-back-of-the-car-rac_4">#</a>
</h4>
<p>Back of the Car is RAC’s new single, and it’s probably about average on the spectrum of RAC songs. So, y'know, it’s alright. But the reason it makes this list is because I love RAC and I saw them perform this song at SXSW before it was released. In other words, I’m biased.</p>
<h4 id="2-rumble-in-the-park-catey-shaw_4">2. Rumble in the Park - Catey Shaw <a class="head_anchor" href="#2-rumble-in-the-park-catey-shaw_4">#</a>
</h4>
<p>I hadn’t heard of Catey Shaw, and I’m not sure if Rumble in the Park is a <em>good</em> song, but it’s certainly an <em>interesting</em> song. The intro brings traces of The Chemical Brothers with a rap beat, and the vocals have a sass that has nothing to do with either. The lyrics use the word fisticuffs, and set up a scene reminiscent of the fight scene in Anchorman. This song has a lot going on and I’m still trying to figure it out.</p>
<h4 id="3-daye-jack-save-my-soul_4">3. Daye Jack - Save My Soul <a class="head_anchor" href="#3-daye-jack-save-my-soul_4">#</a>
</h4>
<p>Daye Jack is definitely still figuring out his sound, which right now seems to vary pretty heavily between rap and glitchey synthey pop. Save My Soul is the standout, and manages to merge those genres palatably, despite being rough around the edges.</p>
<h4 id="4-overflow-ghost-loft_4">4. Overflow - Ghost Loft <a class="head_anchor" href="#4-overflow-ghost-loft_4">#</a>
</h4>
<p>Overflow takes a departure from what we’ve come to expect of Ghost Loft. Instead of dark and moody, Overflow brings bright synths and horns to contrast with faded lyrics, tending towards the realm of indie pop. If you have the pleasure of heading to the beach, this is definitely a song to keep by your side. </p>
<h4 id="5-reup-rationale_4">5. Re.Up - Rationale <a class="head_anchor" href="#5-reup-rationale_4">#</a>
</h4>
<p>Re.Up is the downtempo compliment of Overflow. Both have the same great faded summer vibe, but instead of bright synths and horns Re.Up has atmospheric synths and bass. And when the chorus hits you can feel your body want to rise off the ground.</p>
<p>*These tracks and others from past issues can be found on the Spotify playlist titled mathNEWS.</p>
<p>[flustered]</p>