Stever's blog

One of the big misconceptions of Western thinking is that more data and more analysis leads to better decision making. This is just plain false. The above cartoon is a humorous example of this. We tend to interpret data only through the lens of our dominant idea. More evidence simply takes use further along the lines of our own hypothesis. In this case, the above detectives formed an unconscious bias and they are now likely to underemphasize clues that don’t support the hypothesis and overemphasize other clues that do. Most problems in thinking are due to errors in perception rather than errors in logic. IE more mistakes are made from people jumping to the wrong conclusion due to a wrong interpretation of the evidence than by making a strict logical error.

10/GUI is probably one of the most dramatic reimaginations of the desktop user interface I’ve seen in a long time. This concept proposes a multitouch interaction system that does not require a multitouch screen (and thus does not have to deal with all the problems such a screen causes), but instead uses a multitouch area near the keyboard. The proposed graphical user interface makes full use of this multitouch area. Watch the video, it’s definitely worth your time (of course, some people disagree ☺).

Click on following link to see (I couldn’t embed it in my blog, hhhhh):

10/GUI from C. Miller on Vimeo.

Look at this picture and tell me what you see first. . . do you see a young woman or an old woman?

Usually, you have to point out the other perspective before someone sees it. This is the problem with most people when they brainstorm. Once you’re adept at looking at a certain situation in a certain way, it’s hard to break free. Traditional brainstorming reiterates the same existing patterns and perceptions and only change them in a minor way. This does not lead to breakthroughs! Most people don’t know that they do this though. . . they’re trapped in a cognitive jail and don’t know it.

One of the ways to break free from the jail is to be purposely absurd. IE: find a random word and crossing it with your problem. The more outlandish, the better. Then run an experiment with that random word. It’s usually a waste of time, of course, but occasionally it leads to surprising results and unanticipated consequences. Once you look at it and say “hmmm, that’s funny. . .”, you run with it. This helps discover aspects about the problem that are not immediately obvious.

ha ha,

One of my postings actually made Hacker News: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=857297