A hunch..
“Look. Getting good recommendations is difficult, yet most of us rely on recommendations to guide us.”
“What should I be for Halloween? Do I need a Porsche? Should I dump that loser? Is Phoenix a good place to retire? Whom should I vote for? What toe ring should I buy?
It’s a cruel world out there. Coin-flipping, I Ching consultation, closing your eyes and jumping, postponing the inevitable, Rock-Paper-Scissors, and asking your sister are all time-honored means of getting a recommendation — and yet we think there’s room for one more: Hunch.
In 10 questions or less, Hunch will offer you a great recommendation to address your choice, problem, or dilemma, on thousands of topics. Hunch’s recommendations are based on the collective knowledge of the entire Hunch community, narrowed down to people like you, or just enough like you that you might be mistaken for each other in a dark room. Hunch is designed so that every time it’s used, it learns something new. That means Hunch’s hunches are always getting better.”
The theory behind using collective knowledge for decision making
“Researchers have documented how decisions made by diverse and independent groups of people are often superior to those made by individuals – even experts. The reason is that knowledge is often spread among many people. The challenge is to identify it, collect it, and effectively use it.
Take, for example, expertise about colleges or cars. In a random, large group of people, most probably know something about a few examples (say, the college someone attended or the car they currently drive) but are not experts on the topic as a whole (as a college guidance counselor or auto executive might be). If you were able to collect and organize all the various bits of individual knowledge that the large group possesses, you’d have a pretty complete picture of the topic overall.”
So, in other words:
“Hunch is designed to soak up collective knowledge and then organize it in a useful way to offer you smart recommendations. Hunch proposes custom recommendations for you that it wouldn’t necessarily give to somebody else. But at its core, Hunch’s recommendation algorithm is just a mathematical framework. It’s the users of Hunch who give the algorithm proper training and personality by contributing to it and making it clever, funny, and nuanced…. but most of all very useful in helping everyone to get smart, efficient recommendations.
LARP?
By Erik Fatland, one of the activists behind laivfabrikken (the larp factory), a project for high-quality low-threshold larp in Oslo.
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“Role-playing is play – improvised drama – done for the benefit of the participant/actor rather than an audience. There are many kinds of role-playing – educational, therapeutic, sexual, tabletop, online, freeform, pervasive – and many different contexts where role-playing is performed. Role-playing is “play” both in the sense that Hamlet is “a play” and in the sense that children play. Anyone who has ever played together as kids understand the basic mechanisms of role-playing. Anyone who has only role-played as a kid is also in for a couple of surprises when encountering adults role-playing.
In most places, larp, or live role-playing, started out as an offshoot of tabletop role-playing games (RPGs), a kind of role-playing where the players sit down and verbally describe what their characters do, usually aided by dice, rules and a judge/storyteller called the “gamesmaster”. The liveness of larp comes from players standing up and doing rather than describing, making it look more like drama and theatre and less like storytelling or board-gaming.
There are many, many kinds of larp, and many different local traditions. But in general “larps” can involve a theoretically infinite amount of players (the biggest larps these days count around 5000), there being no need for all players to know what the others are doing, and involves the players’ whole body in performing the character. These two qualities combined set it apart from tabletop role-playing, and from most kinds of “freeform role-playing”.
Larp, tabletop and the freeforms are in turn set apart from therapeutic and educational role-playing in that they are not performed for the sake of learning about something – be it yourself, or the United Nations – but rather for their own sake. In the same way that fiction is read for the sake of enjoying fiction, while prose is usually read for the sake of obtaining facts. Learning can of course be a benefit of both fiction and larping, but it’s not the reason we undertake those activities.
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For years, people have been playing different kinds of games that occur in public spaces, that mix play with reality and players with unwitting civilians, that can invade your life at any time and any place. Some of these should be familiar to role-players: games such as “Killer”, where you murder your friends with bananas, or the “city larp”, played on the streets, in the cafes, amongst non-larpers. Others, such as “Alternate Reality Games” (ARGs) or location-aware mobile games, have their origins in business and marketing. Yet others, such as zombie walks or flash mobs, seem to have exploded out of the creative stew of the Internet.”
His excellent blog can be found here : http://larpwright.efatland.com/
It is remarkable how much larping has in common with service design -designing roles/stories and universes! -Orcs, goblins, mystical orders, spies, asassins, or any kind of extraordinary characters, combat, violence, mystique, politics, or any kind of extraordinary drama aside, there is also semi-real games like Evoke, mentioned earlier. Blurring the lines with what is the “gaming you” and the “real you” you still get a tremendous boost in taking action you might not have done otherwise on your own. If anything it gives “living the label” a new meaning
Idea: Play & escape. What would the better version of you do?/ Chose the you you want to be.
inspiring about design and people
Great presentations by Black-belt Jones /Matt Jones of Dopplr and Berg.
Gaming for change
HOW DO I GO ON QUESTS?
Every hero has an origin story. It’s time for you to discover yours.
Where do your powers come from? Who inspires you? What set you on a path to change the world?
A new quest unlocks every Wednesday at midnight.
Each quest is a question that only you can answer.
Answer all ten questions, and write the story only you can tell.
HOW TO GO ON A QUEST
- Find a quest.
- Tell your story to the world.
- Track your completed quests on My Page.
- Change your story any time
http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/03/01/evoke.game.africa.poverty/index.html?hpt=T2
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motivation, ability and triggers ftw.
-bridging data (collection) with story and context.
Huffduffer has gotten a lot of (IXDA) attention lately because of its signup form:
Quotes:
I thought this was an interesting (i.e. more fun) take on the traditional
web form. I also find it compelling that using the MadLib format increased
conversion by quite a bit. -Brandon E.B. Ward / I X DA
It has been said that it encourages conversation vs. barking orders.
and further:
“I also appreciate it for its literal/actual implementation. And, as Stephen
says, for its idea and feel–it’s engaging, respectful, low-key, and
evocative of play! It’s also gently, radical, which I *love*. It is completely user-centric rather than “corporate data collection”-centric. I’m thrilled in addition to be all the above: it’s effective.” Susan Doran /I X DA
“YOU are the main character so naturally you get drawn in. Not sure it would work for
all types of DC but things that involve some kind of service or a way
to personalize the mundane with humor.” Dave Weinberg /I X DA
+ : http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1007
- : http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/02/27/lesson-from-madlibs-signup-fad-do-your-own-tests/
Why is this interesting to me?
- I’m trying to build a framework for people to engage with /to tell how they feel -how they are, so they will get a greater perspective on what is good for them /good to them. (health on the plus side of the scale)
- I want the product/service to feel like a friendly part of your “everyday” actions.
- I think this can help people to answer more truthfully and reveal parts of their personalities based on attitudes that might not come across as easily by standard forms.
Healthcare vs. Health and Care
According to the dictionary:
Health = the state of being free from illness or injury.
Healthcare = the maintenance and improvement of physical and mental health, especially through the provision of medical services.
While this is true, the modern understanding of healthcare has morphed into what we call “paying for sickcare”– when one becomes sick, “healthcare” is what we pay for to fix us.
It’s a bit of a misnomer. The traditional “healthcare” space profits from sickness. If 98% of their revenue comes from sickness, they’ll likely have a hard time convincing the American public that they want to prevent their own profits with health and wellness. There’s also a second conundrum. The current business model of sickcare depends upon the transaction between payors (health insurance companies like Aetna and Medicare) and providers (hospitals/doctors). The processes that power this sickcare delivery are locked in by the contractual wrangling between these two entities. As these transactions become more and more squeezed by federal and state regulations, the patient experience will suffer– there will be even less money for deliverers to provide a pleasant experience for patients. So the patients paying more and more premiums (it’s currently about $11,000 per year per employee) for today’s “health” transaction will witness a worsening experience.
Written by Jay Parkinson on the Future Well blog.
The entire post is found here: www.thefuturewell.com
Square
1 thoughts:
- Excellent!
- This will allow small businesses or private people to take credit card transactions so their customers don’t always need to carry cash. (which I think is fantastic because…)
- I personally don’t keep cash as I find it easier and safer to pay with plastic. I could definitely see PayPal picking up on this.
2.thoughts:
- Carrying cash makes me feel unsafe not to mention less in control of my spending, but would you trust anyone with one of these things? especially if the guy you buy from look or feel dishonest?
- How hard would be to fake one of these things up or write your own app for a jailbroken phone?
//why am I blogging this? though not related to my master, this is an excellent example on how to explain/illustrate (/sell) a service.
Why so worried?
Susanna is also behind the why not?-photo, posted on this blog some time ago. (I love this graphic representation.) wondering how actual and perceived health would look like.
with love
^ This made me smile far more than average: Mysterious letters is a project by Lenka and Michael where they are going to write to everyone in the world. -Just to make them feel happy and appreciated. It’s such a brilliant and sweet idea and I really love the naive look of this letter.
mysteriousletters blog.
Why not?
on the other side of the scale; a more healthy representative of public voices: here as a marketing stunt for Sony Ericcson.
Ph. by Jon Reksten.
Ingrid
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