Damascity

Michael Bierut sounds off on the role of designers.

The Selective Perception of Human Brains: Why Startups Often Beat The Big Boys

Bryan Eisenberg of GrokDotCom asks “What Makes People Buy?” They have come up with 20 so far.

Edit: A comment linked to the following “Wants make the world go ’round … saleswise” which features a nice cartoon about how projects are badly run to figure out customer wants.

AIDAS: The Relevance of Satisfaction.

“The lesson for persuading today’s modern bloodhound is to serve up real meat and to keep providing the critical scent, from click to click and experience to experience, that keeps the bloodhound galumphing forward.”

NYT article on the teaching of happiness in universities.

Boxes & Arrows interviewed Barry Schwartz on the Paradox of Choice. Interesting points were:

a) his comparing Google filtering to editorial filtering under the guise of democracy
b) the power of defaults:

The power of defaults is this:

When you enter your
drivers’ license, you get asked if you’d like to be an organ donor. And
if you do, you have to check a box and sign a form. And in the United
States, 90% of people approve of organ donation but 20% are organ
donors. There are several European countries that also use the drivers’
license as the opportunity to sign up organ donors. In those countries,
organ donation is 90%. And the only difference is, in those countries,
you have to sign a form and check a box if you don’t want to be an
organ donor. Otherwise you are.

The Church of the Customer Blog writes on the 1% rule, where approximately 1% of all users in a democratized  community will actively do the dirty work and create content.

Alicia Castillo Holley discusses 10 Unhealthy Habits. Of course providence is from Allah, but we need to take care of the means.

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MSN has a nice article about natural sleeping schedule during winter and how to prevent the winter blues.

“Don’t ask yourself, ‘Do I want to go outside?’ ” she advises. “Ask yourself, ‘What clothes do I have to wear to go outside?’ “

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eMarketer reported today on the profile of Vistors to Fashion Websites. The stats show that over 60% are women, over 76% are between 18-44, over 22% have household income of over $100,000 and the top 12 websites make up over 41% of visits.