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Archive for October, 2008

Swoopo: Irrational escalation of commitment

By Dan Lockton ⋅ October 2, 2008 ⋅ 27 comments

Swoopo, a new kind of “entertainment shopping” auction site, takes Martin Shubik’s classic Dollar Auction game to a whole new, automated, mass participation level. It’s an example of the escalation of commitment, or a sunk cost fallacy, where we increase our commitment (in this case with real money) even though (in this case) most users’ [...]

Freudian slip in BBC iTunes story

By Dan Lockton ⋅ October 1, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment

From this BBC story, as of 6.43 pm.
P.S. I love the way it’s claimed “everyone will benefit” from the royalty rise. As a consumer, I can’t wait to be paying more! Perhaps a price increase will help limit the consumption of this precious rivalrous good… oh, wait…
P.P.S. Not the first time a BBC story about [...]

How to enjoy taking notes and revising things

By Dan Lockton ⋅ October 1, 2008 ⋅ 2 comments

It occurs to me that it’s now October, and in Britain that really means the summer’s over (though as I write this it’s pleasantly sunny and crisp outside). And despite attending a lot of very interesting talks and events over the past few months, I’ve been very lax at writing them up for the blog. [...]

Placebo buttons, false affordances and habit-forming

By Dan Lockton ⋅ October 1, 2008 ⋅ 12 comments

This is a great graph from GraphJam, by ‘Bloobeard’. It raises the question, of course, whether the ‘door close’ buttons on lifts/elevators really do actually do anything, or are simply there to ‘manage expectations‘ or act as a placebo.
The Straight Dope has quite a detailed answer from 1986:
The grim truth is that a significant [...]