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Kathy Sierra: Your app makes me fat

682 points by _pius 13y ago

mijustin 13y ago
So nice to have Kathy Sierra back blogging. I've missed her!
- deleted 13y ago
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cafard 13y ago
"The participants who memorized the seven-digit number were nearly 50% more likely than the other group to choose cake over fruit. Researchers were astonished by a pile of experiments that led to one bizarre conclusion: Willpower and cognitive processing draw from the same pool of resources." Bizarre, all right. Unless the subjects were wrestlers or models, why should the choice of fruit v. cake involve self control at all? If you wished to argue that they thought they deserved more of a reward, I might be willing to consider that. And are we talking about seven numbers vs. two numbers (as in the illustration) or seven-digit number v. two-digit numbers, as in the text?
- breadbox 13y ago
  Unless the subjects were wrestlers or models, why should the choice of fruit v. cake involve self control at all? For a fair number of people in the US, choosing fruit over cake is largely a matter of willpower. (I hope you're not arguing that a significant fraction of the population needs to exercise willpower in order to choose cake over fruit!) You could argue that that percentage isn't significant enough for the experiment's sample size, certainly. But otherwise, all things being equal, there should be roughly the same number of people who need to exercise willpower to choose fruit over cake in either group.
- ealloc 13y ago
  The more obvious conclusion, to me, is that people prefer energy-rich foods after expending more mental energy. Our brain is a major energy sink, as it consumes about 20% of our body's energy. I'm pretty sure that after I've been thinking hard, I prefer to eat energy rich foods. Of course, as with anything related to the brain, since we understand it so poorly it's hard to say if either hypothesis is really true.
  - vidarh 13y ago
    You get the same results without having people make food related decisions, and I believe there are experiments that have explicitly looked at the link to energy usage and found it entirely unconvincing at best.
pygy_ 13y ago
"To my readers from long ago: I've missed you. More than you know." -- http://seriouspony.com/about/ http://seriouspony.com/about/ ... She's back. I'm giddy as a schoolgirl.
ryanobjc 13y ago
I love pretty much any time Kathy Sierra writes. So ditto here, I'm glad to read it. As for the willpower situation, on a tangent, I really believe that the notion of willpower as a useful ANYTHING is outdated and badly needs to be replaced. The reality is we are smart people who understand our brains, and can reprogram it. Using emotions and basic urges to create motivations and positive feelings about the things we NEED to do but typically dislike doing is the key here. Luckily there is a group that is teaching these skills outside the normal context of "self help" that turns off oh-so many people.
- vidarh 13y ago
  > The reality is we are smart people who understand our brains I see extremely little evidence of that. Most people are clueless about even the basics of how their mind responds to various stimuli - even the things that are "obvious" with some self observation. Few know what current research results say about it. And even many of those who do know still fail to consistently apply it, because the body is pretty damn good at circumventing our decision making process by pumping the right chemicals.
  - ryanobjc 13y ago
    I think as a species we have a fairly good understanding, but as they say, the future is here, but it just isn't uniformly here yet. Here's to the future! clink
muratmutlu 13y ago
There's so many articles full of analogies and fluff in UX, sometimes I read a post and wonder if I'm in the same industry.
_pius 13y ago
Truly great to have Kathy back. She gave an awesome talk at BoS 2012 on the "Minimum Badass User" that subsumes this post. Well worth an hour of your life to watch: http://businessofsoftware.org/2013/02/kathy-sierra-building-the-minimum-badass-user-business-of-software-a-masterclass-in-thinking-about-software-product-development/ http://businessofsoftware.org/2013/02/kathy-sierra-building-...
ryandvm 13y ago
I don't get it. How did the first experiment imply anything about willpower? Seems to me that a viable explanation for the first experiment is that heavy cognitive processing trips some circuitry in the brain that says "We got a lot of work to do. Get me some glucose."
- rcthompson 13y ago
  The blog post is glossing over the details of the peer-reviewed scientific literature a bit. I'm not sure, but I believe the result has been replicated without food. On the other hand, I believe there is also a body of more recent research indicating that the "cognitive fuel tank" model is too simplistic to give an accurate description of how it works.
  - JanezStupar 13y ago
    A guy went and invented calculus in something like 2009. It went through peer review process and got praised for being revolutionary. However the author was a MD. Peer-reviewed scientific literature means nothing on its own.
    - rcthompson 13y ago
      A single peer-reviewed article means nothing on its own, but a result replicated in many peer-reviewed articles by independent authors over many years starts to mean something. That's generally what people mean when they say that the "peer-reviewed scientific literature" supports a claim or theory. However, the very common exception is when someone with an agenda abuses the term "peer-reviewed scientific literature" to describe a single article or a string of articles from a single or a few closely-affiliated sources in order to support their agenda. Of course, this is taking advantage of the true meaning of the term. See also "clinically proven".
      - JanezStupar 13y ago
        But the example I mentioned resulted in citations. And praise and replications and whatnot. It was still absurd and should not have happened.
kevinconroy 13y ago
So happy to see Kathy blogging again! She's always been my favorite tech-UX blogger. For anyone interested in her prior blog, Creating Passionate Users, I coped with her absence from the blogosphere by curating an e-book with all of my favorite posts. You can grab a copy here: http://www.kevinmconroy.com/pdf/creating_passionate_users.pdf http://www.kevinmconroy.com/pdf/creating_passionate_users.pd...
- filpen 13y ago
  Wow thank you for that, I just found out about her old blog and it looks very interesting! For clueless people like me, if the images used in her posts look familiar it's because she is the co-creator of the Head First book series: http://www.headfirstlabs.com/kathy.php http://www.headfirstlabs.com/kathy.php
- porker 13y ago
  Thank you! Any chance you could convert your source into an epub (or even mobi, but not so keen on that)?
  - kevinconroy 13y ago
    A quick Google search turned up some PDF-to-epub converters. YMMV. I can send you the Word document that I used for this if it's helpful.
    - kaitai 13y ago
      word to epub is easy -- do that instead.
- henryaj 13y ago
  This is incredible. Thank you so much.
tobtoh 13y ago
For those people wondering why so many comments here are saying 'Glad to see Kathy blogging again', it's because she stopped blogging in 2007 after getting severely harassed online. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Sierra#Harassment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Sierra#Harassment As someone who followed her previous blog 'Creating Passionate Users', I'm really glad she's back writing publicly - not so much for this particular post (which wasn't anything novel), but more that it means her scars have healed enough. Hope to see more posts from her soon!
- jmduke 13y ago
  Wow, that's terrible. Was there something that instigated (not to imply that Kathy was somehow at fault) the harassment beyond "hurf durf there's a woman on the internet"?
  - yareally 13y ago
    It was never totally made clear what the people making the threats motives were, but most likely harassment because of her gender is considered the likely reason. http://onebyonemedia.com/the-sierra-saga-part-3-who-are-the-real-culprits-in-the-kathy-sierra-saga/ http://onebyonemedia.com/the-sierra-saga-part-3-who-are-the-...
  - nthitz 13y ago
    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html Weev has some curious quotes in this article “I want everyone off the Internet. Bloggers are filth. They need to be destroyed. Blogging gives the illusion of participation to a bunch of retards. . . . We need to put these people in the oven!” and “The question we have to answer is: How do we kill four of the world’s six billion people in the most just way possible?”
    - canadiancreed 13y ago
      Ya that person needs a permanent stay in a rubber padded room. If they're not there already.
foobarbazqux 13y ago
> Willpower and cognitive processing draw from the same pool of resources. Like many things in psychology, this is basically unfalsifiable. Our brains have pools of resources? How do you even differentiate between willpower and cognitive processing at a neurological level? It's one model, but there are other equally valid but also unfalsifiable explanations. What about anxiety goes up after working on a hard problem (memorizing a 7-digit number, apparently) - maybe you can test this by measuring cortisol levels - and so you choose the (stereotypically) more satisfying and rewarding dessert (cake) as a form of emotional eating and also, you know, rewarding yourself for a job well done? I mean, it's basically just saying, "Use your brain, and your brain will get tired. Both solving problems and doing something you don't want to do count as using your brain." Sure, but I hardly need an experiment to tell me that. Also, what about people who perform better under stress? Since it requires willpower to work hard and meet a deadline, and since the quality of your cognitive processing also goes up (for an initial period), doesn't that defeat the "competing for the same pool of resources" claim? Psychology is great and a lot of the unfalsifiable stuff is valuable but it's irritating when it's dressed up as science.
- vidarh 13y ago
  > How do you even differentiate between willpower and cognitive processing at a neurological level? It's one model, but there are other equally valid but also unfalsifiable explanations. What about anxiety goes up after working on a hard problem This may matter for some things, such as if you're doing research in the field. But there are plenty of situations where it is irrelevant, such as in the context of this article, where what matters is the overall point: Added cognitive load has been shown to result in reduced willpower. Whether or not explanation given is correct may be interesting to discuss, but it is not important to the point of the article. > I mean, it's basically just saying, "Use your brain, and your brain will get tired. Both solving problems and doing something you don't want to do count as using your brain." Sure, but I hardly need an experiment to tell me that. No, it is saying more than that. It also says that exercising willpower affects the same. That is, maintaining decisions that you do want, such as keeping to a diet, is also affected, and so counteracting desires to stick to what you consciously have decided you ant gets progressively harder if you have "used your brain" on pretty anything else. More importantly, when you say "your brain will get tired", it is misleading: Many people feel energized after spending time thinking about a puzzle, or playing a complicated game, for example. Yet as far as I remember, even when people feel they are relaxing, if they impose cognitive load, those actions will still measurably reduce your willpower for some time afterwards. You may not have needed an experiment to tell you that, but a lot of people have needed experiments to tell them that. More people should be aware of that tooo, as it makes a big difference in strategies to ensure you stick to your goals: For example, you may get better results if you make sure you go to the store when relaxed to reduce the chance of impulse buying stuff that messes up your diet. Many who diet avoid shopping for food when hungry, but few avoid shopping for food when they've spent a lot of time solving problems. In general, rest before you put yourself in situations that test your willpower, and be aware that playing your favourite mind puzzle game is not the right type of rest, even if it's fun and you feel energized afterwards. > Also, what about people who perform better under stress? Since it requires willpower to work hard and meet a deadline, and since the quality of your cognitive processing also goes up (for an initial period), doesn't that defeat the "competing for the same pool of resources" claim? You're making assumptions here that you have not justified: That it requires willpower to work hard and meet a deadline, as opposed to that it can be a total failure of willpower to allow things to wait that long in the first place and be motivated by stress; that the quality of your cognitive processing goes up (as opposed to that you actually sit down and try to do the work). Maybe you're right, but you fall straight into the same trap you accuse the psychologists behind research into willpower of doing: Ignoring other factors like anxiety.
hoi 13y ago
My take on this, is that you can create an app/site that is engaging and depletes self/control or willpower and then monetize that at the end by selling cake or equivalent. Can test if the conversion funnel for cake (or low self-contro) goods) sell more after a more 'intense' work out on the site/app.
- asciimo 13y ago
  I don't think that you're being facetious. But I don't care; that's an awesome takeaway. Score one for the Dark Side.
  - hoi 13y ago
    Nope, not being facetious, it's a perfectly valid monetization strategy to test and pursue, in some ways, it's similar to a gaming mechanic... spend energy doing things that interest you, then pay to replenish energy, except the energy your depleting is cognitive.
    - PavlovsCat 13y ago
      In the same way rohypnol is a perfectly valid dating strategy? If the ends justify the means, just about anything is "valid" as long as it achieves the desired result.
      - hoi 13y ago
        That's being facetious since you're now using morally questionable examples and rohypnol wouldn't fit the example of buying something that relies on willpower to stop you. A better example would be, an exam revision/study website that affiliates themselves with energy drinks/bars. There isn't a requirement to buy the energy drinks to continue to use the app, but would be interesting to see if people are more inclined to buy the energy foods. Alternatively a bakery/cake website, whether they can increase conversions.
        PavlovsCat 13y ago
areeved 13y ago
This is fascinating. For those that are interested, Daniel Kahneman discusses this in 'Thinking, Fast and Slow' too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow What I would like to know is how can we grow this limited resource?
- msprague 13y ago
  I'm reading that book right now and I absolutely love it.
hsuresh 13y ago
For those interested in this topic, Daniel Kahneman's book "Thinking, fast and slow" is an excellent resource. He refers to 2 systems in our brain, and how they interplay when making everyday decisions. Fascinating read.
marcamillion 13y ago
Like the other commenters, so glad that Kathy is blogging again. That being said, I am glad that she has finally verbalized what I have always felt. As the only person running 5KMVP, I have always found that it is hard for me to do things like marketing, and customer relations/support on the same day I do development. That would also negatively impact my performance of both. But now that I have people working with, I can concentrate on interacting with my clients without feeling guilty (i.e. knowing that the rest of my day is dead, from a development perspective). Also, this explains the logic behind Steve Jobs always choosing a black turtleneck, blue jeans and sneakers. If he has 1 less thing to make a decision about, his life is much easier. I have recently adopted that, and am trying to simplify my wardrobe as much as I can. This also impacts how I schedule 'outside' events. If I have to go to an event outside of the house, that usually means no coding for me on that day. I can't quite explain why - other than the mere fact that I know I have to go out, is enough of a distraction to make me not be able to 'get into the zone'. Glad to know that I am not deficient in anyway, and it is just being depleted from the same 'cognitive tank'.
winfred 13y ago
Now take it one step further, not just your UI, that's peanuts next to that big elephant in the room. Each ad you make me watch, requires a little bit of my willpower. I have to ignore its message, resist clicking on that nice looking lady. Your ad based revenue model is making me fat way faster than your UI will ever be able to do.
teej 13y ago
This is bothering me, but first image is inaccurate. They were asked to memorize a two-digit number (like 17) or a seven-digit number (like 8675309). The image shows 2 two-digit numbers and 7 two-digit numbers. This is important as our working memory capacity has been shown to be about seven digits. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_... It's a minor detail, but an important one. EDIT: It looks like the image has been updated. Thanks Kathy!
- noloqy 13y ago
  It bothered me a bit too. What also bothered me was that I'm not sure if the conclusion of the research is correct. At least, from the fact that people who were asked to memorize more, we can't deduce that willpower and cognitive processing draw from the same pool of resources. The conclusion could be correct (and I confess that I haven't read the paper), but there is one other obvious reason that may be possible. If I do physical exercise, I have an easier time allowing myself to eat some chocolate. If I work a long day, I have an easier time allowing myself to sit down and watch TV for a while. If I solve a difficult puzzle, I have an easier time allowing myself to do something fun. I like to believe that this is not the result of my lacking willpower after cognitive processing or physical exercise, but of a moral justification that it related to the quid pro quo principle: if I do something good, I have deserved the right to do something bad.
  - samastur 13y ago
    What you described is exactly how lack of will power looks like. You find rationalization, an argument why it is OK to do something you otherwise would prefer not to do (eat cake, avoid work-out...). I've always had to pay attention to my weight and the difficult part is persuading yourself not to make an exception no matter how compelling the argument for it looks like (and "deserve" is one of the more difficult ones).
    - noloqy 13y ago
      I see your point and you're right. Thanks for sharing :)
matthiasb 13y ago
Now I know why my dog stopped working on his Kong... he's spoiled!
ibejoeb 13y ago
That's pretty neat. I understand why so many folks reject the claims here, but the observation itself is very interesting. It certainly seems that highly successful, highly visible people (creatives, executives, politicians) tend, disproportionally, to exhibit behavioral problems (addiction, suicide, etc.) I don't know if it really is disproportionate, but if so, is it related to their exertion, or depletion, as the author puts is? Is it the visibility and the accompanying scrutiny? Maybe it's the other way around, and the underlying psychological makeup propels short-term performance. Very interesting stuff, especially in context of burn-out.
eagsalazar2 13y ago
Not to be too cynical but this really seems like a dangerous insight for people optimizing conversions. Hmm, everyone wants my product but it is wasteful/bad for me/a luxury/etc? Just deplete their ability to resist first. Ooops, someone trying to cancel their subscription? How about a nice maze of forms to get through first? Anyway, the super cool insight of this article is the relationship between cognitive load and will power. We all knew "try harder" didn't work. Simplify everything else is a way more powerful way to manage your motivation and it makes it super clear that you can really only do a certain number of things. When your motivation turns to procrastination, it isn't some "problem" you are having, it is you simply hitting your cognitive limit for the day/week/month. Awesome.
- gohrt 13y ago
  This is of course how sales actually works. That's why there are 700 models of camera -- to get you focused on which one you want, not whether you even need it or if there is a competitor you should look at.
jjindev 13y ago
Dan Ariely's Coursera on Irrational Behavior spent much time on current research in these areas. Very interesting (and a good/fun course, should it come around again).
PaperclipTaken 13y ago
Anecdotal evidence is not scientific, but this makes a lot of sense in the context of my life. At work, when I hit a tough problem, I'm much more likely to tab over to HN or reddit, yet I've found that somehow I manage to hit the deadlines at the same pace regardless of how much I force myself to focus. I do think though while you might be drawing from one 'pool', it's a pool that you can work to expand. To me this seems to be the same vein of psychology that makes ADHD medicine ineffective for kids on the long term. There's one pool of resources you are drawing from but like muscular strength you aren't doomed to your current limits.
- manmal 13y ago
  Yes! My pool was quite drained 1 or 2 years ago, but I managed to enlarge it by taking longer breaks, shutting down completely on weekends, eliminating foods I'm intolerant to (gluten & lactose inflame my gut pretty quickly), introducing intermittent fasting (no food until noon), adding fish oil and vit D, switching from cardio to HIIT workouts, and keeping caffeine intake constant. I can now be highly productive for at least 7-8h per day, and then still focus on my family (vs turning into a couch zombie). Lack of sleep (< 6h; optimum is 8h) still kills me though. I think intermittent fasting and fish oil did the most for me in this regard. Since quality of sleep is really important to my focus, it might be worth mentioning that zinc supplements do a lot for me here (but at least this remedy is purely anecdotal).
lancefisher 13y ago
I'm glad she's back. I always enjoyed reading her articles back when blogs were new.
astral303 13y ago
Sadly, when it comes to app reviews from tech blogs and publications, the cognitive load placed on the user is rarely ever noticed or highlighted, unless it's so high that it's unbearable. Instead, apps often get bonus points for eye candy and gratuitous, but cool-looking animation. Nobody ever writes "wow, I got a bunch of things done and I didn't even notice the interface details." This is particularly bad in the geek community, as we are used to high cognitive load (configuring X anyone?), and so we brush off any complaints about it as "stupid" or "computer illiterate." One early app example is all the gas mileage tracking apps. Damn near every one of them in the early iPhone days had the spinning odometer control and the spinning gas number controls (where you spin each number up and down, like a key combo). I recall being infuriated by those designs, because all I really wanted to do was to quickly enter the odometer or the gallons and dealing with spinning those damn digits was NOT at all quick. Compared to the effortless/mindless act of typing into a digit keypad, spinner controls required much more cognitive load (did I spin too fast, will it go too far? Let me catch it at the right digit. Which digit do I need to push up or down to make it match what's on my real odo?).
- mrxd 13y ago
  Well, yeah but... no. Cognitive load is not really about speed or animation taking up time.
hheide 13y ago
Actually the the app doesn't make you fat. The resource that is burned is sugar. To replenish it you need one piece of candy. After which you'll be as able to make decisions as you ever was. (But Burger king won't tell you, since they don't make money from candy.)
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
fauigerzigerk 13y ago
"Willpower and cognitive processing draw from the same pool of resources." I don't see how that follows from the the memorization experiment. Maybe the people who could remember 7 items felt they worked hard so they deserved to be rewarded with a chocolate cake.
- markild 13y ago
  My thoughts exactly. I don't know about the original paper, but the article doesn't even seem to discuss the possibility of other conclusions.
- h3st 13y ago
  > Maybe the people who could remember 7 items felt they worked hard so they deserved to be rewarded with a chocolate cake. That would be what depleted willpower feels like, assuming you like chocolate cake and prefer it over the other option. Depleted willpower doesn't really feel like much in itself, just an increased likelihood of thinking "oh wow, chocolate cake" over "cake? doesn't fit my macros".
  - fauigerzigerk 13y ago
    I'm sure we could all come up with tons of other similar interpretations, but what is this other than pure speculation?
  - yeahrightdbag 13y ago
    How do we know it's not an increased sense of entitlement rather than a reduction of willpower?
ankeshk 13y ago
While I agree with the thesis, a contradictory point comes to mind. We just don't know a lot about how cognitive resources are utilized. Long distance runners know this. Athletes know this. The whole concept of "second wind". Where they find the strength to better their game using way less resources -- after they have been tired. Some type of cognitive resource depletion gives people even more energy and motivation. While I agree that things should be made simpler and we shouldn't over-gamify things, I don't think we should make decisions with the cake / fruits question in mind. That just provides a framework to dumb things down. We will never enable the users to hit their second wind if they never get tasks that make them crave cakes. I guess my point is: simplicity is good. Simplicity to the point of dumbness is not.
- tetha 13y ago
  Also, another important thing to realize is: Simplicity is ambiguous and highly dependent on the target group. Or, put in other words, certain choices that might look hard or certain mechanisms that look complicated might end up being simple. For example, in a small project, the simplest possible solution for a problem was to throw the full power of regexes at the user. Why? Because the audience was a number of developers who knew regexes and they needed the ability to match some strings. In a similar vein, if my mom is cooking, it is actually simpler if the recipe doesn't give her a billion choices how to do a simple step, just tell her that one step. She'll do it the way she likes. So, simplicity is actually pretty complicated, and removing the wrong choices and possibilities might make your program a lot harder to use.
dreamfactory 13y ago
Why is this considered the moral responsibility of the app creator and not the consumer? Seems to be a highly immature viewpoint where the consumer doesn't take responsibility for how they live their life.
xenophanes 13y ago
This is so stupid. The experiment can be explained in many different ways and she just picks a trendy one. Another explanation is people who did harder work were more tired and hungry, or felt more like rewarding themselves. I don't particularly favor this explanation; I have no idea what is the right explanation; and that's the point, the experiment doesn't tell us. She also ignores that for some people it takes more willpower to eat the cake. It can go either way depending on a person's ideas. She just assumes everyone has currently trendy ideas wherein fruit bowls are unpleasant but virtuous and people use willpower to eat them. But many other lifestyles are possible. For example, one might think cake is more delicious but they are scared of getting fat so it requires willpower to enjoy eating it instead of giving in to the fear, whereas the fruit bowl is easy to eat because there's no pressure against it, so it's the easy default.
- algorias 13y ago
  Another example: I am a chocolate lover and would take the fruit, because chocolate cake (especially the free variety) has a tendency of tasting worse than it looks.
- alexhawdon 13y ago
  Although it doesn't necessarily do away with the entire message, I'm with you in thinking that the premise is a bit of a stretch. My initial guess at a reasonable explanation was that we're more inclined to believe we deserve a treat/reward after doing work, and memorising a long number is obviously more 'work' than memorising a short one.
yutyut 13y ago
Perhaps the conclusions drawn by the experiment (if they are correctly paraphrased in the post; I didn't read the full paper yet: http://www.d.umn.edu/~dglisczi/4501web/4501Readings/Shiv(1999)FruitOrCake.pdf http://www.d.umn.edu/~dglisczi/4501web/4501Readings/Shiv(199...) are valid but I think it would be pertinent to consider that perhaps rather than being 'cognitively taxed', those 7-number participants simply felt that they worked harder and therefore deserved a better prize. I often find myself making similar justifications if I've pushed myself hard in a workout or followed my diet faithfully. It would be interesting to see an experiment that 'cognitively taxes' participants by having them perform a task that is not considered positive. Memorizing a number elicits a feeling of accomplishment that may contribute to the justification I described above.
- yutyut 13y ago
  Non-broken link to the paper: http://www.d.umn.edu/~dglisczi/4501web/4501Readings/Shiv(1999)FruitOrCake.pdf
  - mjolk 13y ago
    The other link worked for me, but thank you for your phrasing -- 'link to the' is the first thing that I did after scanning the blog post and this comment reply was helpful.
- vidarh 13y ago
  > those 7-number participants simply felt that they worked harder and therefore deserved a better prize. That is exactly how you expect reduced willpower to play out in practice in a situation where people are forced to make a conscious choice (as opposed to just absent-mindedly picking something). Nobody "just" takes the option that is counter to their long term goals, they rationalise the choice either then and there or afterwards, and rationalisations that we "deserve" something or are morally justified are amongst the easiest for us to grab onto.
  - yutyut 13y ago
    I'm not sure whether you're agreeing or disagreeing with me here.
tcskeptic 13y ago
Based on this I would think that the conversion rate on the TURBOTAX offer to subtract the cost of the service from your return for a HUGE 100% fee (meaning the cost of that method of payment is as much as the tax service itself) but allows you to skip the entering of your CC information, given that it comes at the end of doing your taxes, is probably pretty high. They should try a cake add on.
mmilo 13y ago
Anyone notice hitting the escape key sends you to a squarespace login screen? Seems like an odd thing to have turned on by default.
dschiptsov 13y ago
Statistically caught correlation does not imply the assusmed causation you wish to "prove". The guys who memorize numbers might associate a cake with a reward and choose it just in order to reward oneself for a meaningless and boring waste of time they choose by mistake, while in 2 digits group it wasn't counted even as a joke. As for willpower/self-control - hormonal levels are almost always the major factors. Just do the silly experiments which are "considered unethical" involving "images from those magazines" and you will notice lots of correlations.) The famous experiment with tape-recorded heart-beats is the beautiful one. Again, trying to find a single cause in psychology is kind of naive. The theoretical framework advocated by Marvin Minsky of constant competition of multitude of semi-independent agencies (specialized regions of the brain) helps to develop the notion of multiple causation. My guess is that if one would nail a poster of a fit bikini girl to a wall, the number of cakes chosen will be reduced dramatically, everything else being equal. But for a pony psychology the article is perfectly OK.)
moomin 13y ago
She's back, the article's great, all is right with the world. Let's read the first comment... oh. Seriously, I thought the article was great. It would be great even if it wasn't written by Kathy Sierra.
harishankar 13y ago
I always knew that thinking a lot made me hungry. And tired. Mental work is quite as tiring to the mind as physical work is to the body and muscles. The article is well written, but I found nothing particularly new in that viewpoint.
ludoo 13y ago
Sitting all day on a chair, then going home to sit in front of a TV makes you fat, not exercising willpower and using your brain...
vannevar 13y ago
Grad students and dogs, sure. But how do we know these findings apply to humans?
lkrubner 13y ago
Yesterday on HN there was a link to this story: http://www.penny-arcade.com/report/article/swimming-in-a-sea-of-shit-the-internets-war-against-creatives http://www.penny-arcade.com/report/article/swimming-in-a-sea... Which had this quote: "This isn't something that happens to some people online, it's something that happens to everyone who has ever put any of themselves out there for public consumption." One thing that has confused me from the beginning, when Sierra first claimed that she had received death threats, was exactly why this story took on the scale that it took on. I recall at the time, of the 100 tech bloggers that I read on a regular basis, this story overshadowed everything else. I recall that previously I had been unsympathetic to Sierra because of the perception that she tended to rely on hyperbole and drama to sell her books. For that reason I was initially skeptical of her claims. Later it turned out that the 4 bloggers who harassed had clearly stepped over some line, and said some things that were at the least, very rude. As I recall, all of them later apologized (all of them were bloggers with some substantial reputations in the world of tech blogs). But given the amount of abuse that happens online on a regular basis, it seemed a little surreal to me that the story reached such a scale.
- showerst 13y ago
  I think it partially exploded because this wasn't some youtube celeb or musician (not that they don't have a right to be harassment free), but a _professional_ blogging about, of all things, _user experience_. There was quite a bit of 'oh, that happens online in scummy places, but surely not in my community', until people saw some of the things that were said and done.
- kaitai 13y ago
  The comment above (showerst) is right -- everyone says "well that happens somewhere else" until it happens right in their own community and gives the lie to "but we're not like that!" The other element is that stories like Sierra's (or the Trayvon story, or plenty of others) provide one public example at just the right time to catch a larger feeling or represent a larger problem that people are grappling with. It's a chance to hash out through a personal story how we think about "stuff".
- asdasf 13y ago
6ren 13y ago
One thing that troubles me about technological progress is whether we really are making anything better. Sure, we solve one problem... but it creates problems of its own, and exposes previously hidden problems. I think this article provides something of an answer: work in itself is not a bad thing. It takes effort and concentration - it's work - but it can be enjoyable, satisfying, meaningful. But putting in effort that is wasted, by being diverted into tedious, pointless, unnecessarily complex tasks, is a bad thing. It's not enjoyable, not satisfying, not meaningful. Therefore, any technological progress that reduces that tedium is a good thing (even if it has problems of its own, or exposes other problems, provided net tedium is less). [I don't think this is the whole answer, but I think it's part of an answer (probably, things like saving lives, health, and somehow enabling people to relate better are more important goals).]
okamiueru 13y ago
Anecdotal, conjectural, and even the dubious psychological experiments she references are completely misrepresented. The subjects were told told to memorize a number, and on their way to a different room where they expected to be tested, someone stopped them mid-way and asked them to choose between two snacks -- a fruit salad and a cake. The people who had been told to memorize many digits didn't choose the healthy snack as frequent as the people who had been told to memorize few digits (and, presumably, could focus on which choice they really preferred). It tries to convey "common sense" concepts, using conjecture and complicated constructs. It hurts my brain when I try to understand what is meant by "to use up cognitive resources". The more convoluted an explanation is, the less I feel it has been understood by the person explaining it. I have a strong distaste for psychology terms that add depth, but not clarity, as if trying to validate and give authority to the field or explanation. A bit ironic for an article trying to explain the concept of "minimizing drainage of the cognitive tank" (to paraphrase). So, what is this article really about? This -- http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Make-Me-Think-Usability/dp/0321344758 http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Make-Me-Think-Usability/dp/032134....
6ren 13y ago
If you spend the day exercising self-control (angry customers, clueless co-workers), by the time you get home your cog resource tank is flashing E. The Linus solution becomes increasingly appealing...
krmboya 13y ago
I'd guess terminal users consume more cognitive resources than GUI users. Are they on average fatter than the latter? Just a speculation.
- asdasf 13y ago
  Why do you guess that? I don't think there is any correlation between GUI vs terminal and cognitive load. There are simple terminal apps, and simple GUI apps. There are also complex and difficult to use terminal apps and GUI apps.
  - krmboya 13y ago
    Fair point. I also remembered Robe Pike's paper: http://harmful.cat-v.org/cat-v/unix_prog_design.pdf http://harmful.cat-v.org/cat-v/unix_prog_design.pdf
NatCrodo 13y ago
I'm a fan too! I was extremely happy when I saw that she is writing again. Looking forward for more.
varelse 13y ago
A bit off-topic, but it aligns with why I find daily standups to be a soul-crushing waste of time. Scrum Master Jar Jar (http://softwaremaestro.wordpress.com/2007/06/30/scrum-master-jar-jar/ http://softwaremaestro.wordpress.com/2007/06/30/scrum-master...) went into more detail as to why Scrum is usually run this way, but just sayin'...
dkarl 13y ago
I don't think the logic is sound. The psychological finding she's applying is that willpower is a finite cognitive resource. It isn't sound to apply that finding to all decisions you make while using an app -- only the decisions that involve willpower. She generalizes to all cognitive resources being finite... If your UX asks the user to make choices, for example, even if those choices are both clear and useful, the act of deciding is a cognitive drain. And not just while they're deciding... even after we choose, an unconscious cognitive background thread is slowly consuming/leaking resources, "Was that the right choice?" ... which sounds plausible and may well be true, but is much more general than the result she's building on. I'm inclined to think she's right, though. It would be interesting to know if the psychological research has already been done. The willpower results are only well-publicized because people have a compelling personal interest in it.
KedarMhaswade 13y ago
This is definitely very interesting. In the long run however, I think self-control/willpower works in unison with cognitive abilities, as another famous experiment -- the Marshmallow experiment, tends to conclude.
timmyelliot 13y ago
Having a user expend more cognitive energy on my app (as long as I'm not frustrating them), sounds like a good thing. It sounds like another way for them to bond. Seems like I'd rather it be my app them my competition's.
piyush_soni 13y ago
What a lame article. I know so many people are praising the author here and happy for her 'return', but if this has always been the quality of her writing, I'm not impressed. Not the mobile app, but any kind of thinking or stress will reduce your will power, and thus according to you is making you fat. So you might as well stop thinking. Or, on other side, do diet control and exercise. 2nd option is wise, according to me.

682 points by _pius 13y ago

mijustin 13y ago

So nice to have Kathy Sierra back blogging. I've missed her!

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

cafard 13y ago

"The participants who memorized the seven-digit number were nearly 50% more likely than the other group to choose cake over fruit. Researchers were astonished by a pile of experiments that led to one bizarre conclusion: Willpower and cognitive processing draw from the same pool of resources." Bizarre, all right. Unless the subjects were wrestlers or models, why should the choice of fruit v. cake involve self control at all? If you wished to argue that they thought they deserved more of a reward, I might be willing to consider that. And are we talking about seven numbers vs. two numbers (as in the illustration) or seven-digit number v. two-digit numbers, as in the text?

breadbox 13y ago
Unless the subjects were wrestlers or models, why should the choice of fruit v. cake involve self control at all? For a fair number of people in the US, choosing fruit over cake is largely a matter of willpower. (I hope you're not arguing that a significant fraction of the population needs to exercise willpower in order to choose cake over fruit!) You could argue that that percentage isn't significant enough for the experiment's sample size, certainly. But otherwise, all things being equal, there should be roughly the same number of people who need to exercise willpower to choose fruit over cake in either group.
ealloc 13y ago
The more obvious conclusion, to me, is that people prefer energy-rich foods after expending more mental energy. Our brain is a major energy sink, as it consumes about 20% of our body's energy. I'm pretty sure that after I've been thinking hard, I prefer to eat energy rich foods. Of course, as with anything related to the brain, since we understand it so poorly it's hard to say if either hypothesis is really true.
- vidarh 13y ago
  You get the same results without having people make food related decisions, and I believe there are experiments that have explicitly looked at the link to energy usage and found it entirely unconvincing at best.

pygy_ 13y ago

"To my readers from long ago: I've missed you. More than you know." -- http://seriouspony.com/about/ http://seriouspony.com/about/ ... She's back. I'm giddy as a schoolgirl.

ryanobjc 13y ago

I love pretty much any time Kathy Sierra writes. So ditto here, I'm glad to read it. As for the willpower situation, on a tangent, I really believe that the notion of willpower as a useful ANYTHING is outdated and badly needs to be replaced. The reality is we are smart people who understand our brains, and can reprogram it. Using emotions and basic urges to create motivations and positive feelings about the things we NEED to do but typically dislike doing is the key here. Luckily there is a group that is teaching these skills outside the normal context of "self help" that turns off oh-so many people.

vidarh 13y ago
> The reality is we are smart people who understand our brains I see extremely little evidence of that. Most people are clueless about even the basics of how their mind responds to various stimuli - even the things that are "obvious" with some self observation. Few know what current research results say about it. And even many of those who do know still fail to consistently apply it, because the body is pretty damn good at circumventing our decision making process by pumping the right chemicals.
- ryanobjc 13y ago
  I think as a species we have a fairly good understanding, but as they say, the future is here, but it just isn't uniformly here yet. Here's to the future! clink

muratmutlu 13y ago

There's so many articles full of analogies and fluff in UX, sometimes I read a post and wonder if I'm in the same industry.

_pius 13y ago

Truly great to have Kathy back. She gave an awesome talk at BoS 2012 on the "Minimum Badass User" that subsumes this post. Well worth an hour of your life to watch: http://businessofsoftware.org/2013/02/kathy-sierra-building-the-minimum-badass-user-business-of-software-a-masterclass-in-thinking-about-software-product-development/ http://businessofsoftware.org/2013/02/kathy-sierra-building-...

ryandvm 13y ago

I don't get it. How did the first experiment imply anything about willpower? Seems to me that a viable explanation for the first experiment is that heavy cognitive processing trips some circuitry in the brain that says "We got a lot of work to do. Get me some glucose."

rcthompson 13y ago
The blog post is glossing over the details of the peer-reviewed scientific literature a bit. I'm not sure, but I believe the result has been replicated without food. On the other hand, I believe there is also a body of more recent research indicating that the "cognitive fuel tank" model is too simplistic to give an accurate description of how it works.
- JanezStupar 13y ago
  A guy went and invented calculus in something like 2009. It went through peer review process and got praised for being revolutionary. However the author was a MD. Peer-reviewed scientific literature means nothing on its own.
  - rcthompson 13y ago
    A single peer-reviewed article means nothing on its own, but a result replicated in many peer-reviewed articles by independent authors over many years starts to mean something. That's generally what people mean when they say that the "peer-reviewed scientific literature" supports a claim or theory. However, the very common exception is when someone with an agenda abuses the term "peer-reviewed scientific literature" to describe a single article or a string of articles from a single or a few closely-affiliated sources in order to support their agenda. Of course, this is taking advantage of the true meaning of the term. See also "clinically proven".
    - JanezStupar 13y ago
      But the example I mentioned resulted in citations. And praise and replications and whatnot. It was still absurd and should not have happened.

kevinconroy 13y ago

So happy to see Kathy blogging again! She's always been my favorite tech-UX blogger. For anyone interested in her prior blog, Creating Passionate Users, I coped with her absence from the blogosphere by curating an e-book with all of my favorite posts. You can grab a copy here: http://www.kevinmconroy.com/pdf/creating_passionate_users.pdf http://www.kevinmconroy.com/pdf/creating_passionate_users.pd...

filpen 13y ago
Wow thank you for that, I just found out about her old blog and it looks very interesting! For clueless people like me, if the images used in her posts look familiar it's because she is the co-creator of the Head First book series: http://www.headfirstlabs.com/kathy.php http://www.headfirstlabs.com/kathy.php
porker 13y ago
Thank you! Any chance you could convert your source into an epub (or even mobi, but not so keen on that)?
- kevinconroy 13y ago
  A quick Google search turned up some PDF-to-epub converters. YMMV. I can send you the Word document that I used for this if it's helpful.
  - kaitai 13y ago
    word to epub is easy -- do that instead.
henryaj 13y ago
This is incredible. Thank you so much.

tobtoh 13y ago

For those people wondering why so many comments here are saying 'Glad to see Kathy blogging again', it's because she stopped blogging in 2007 after getting severely harassed online. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Sierra#Harassment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Sierra#Harassment As someone who followed her previous blog 'Creating Passionate Users', I'm really glad she's back writing publicly - not so much for this particular post (which wasn't anything novel), but more that it means her scars have healed enough. Hope to see more posts from her soon!

jmduke 13y ago
Wow, that's terrible. Was there something that instigated (not to imply that Kathy was somehow at fault) the harassment beyond "hurf durf there's a woman on the internet"?
- yareally 13y ago
  It was never totally made clear what the people making the threats motives were, but most likely harassment because of her gender is considered the likely reason. http://onebyonemedia.com/the-sierra-saga-part-3-who-are-the-real-culprits-in-the-kathy-sierra-saga/ http://onebyonemedia.com/the-sierra-saga-part-3-who-are-the-...
- nthitz 13y ago
  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html Weev has some curious quotes in this article “I want everyone off the Internet. Bloggers are filth. They need to be destroyed. Blogging gives the illusion of participation to a bunch of retards. . . . We need to put these people in the oven!” and “The question we have to answer is: How do we kill four of the world’s six billion people in the most just way possible?”
  - canadiancreed 13y ago
    Ya that person needs a permanent stay in a rubber padded room. If they're not there already.

foobarbazqux 13y ago

> Willpower and cognitive processing draw from the same pool of resources. Like many things in psychology, this is basically unfalsifiable. Our brains have pools of resources? How do you even differentiate between willpower and cognitive processing at a neurological level? It's one model, but there are other equally valid but also unfalsifiable explanations. What about anxiety goes up after working on a hard problem (memorizing a 7-digit number, apparently) - maybe you can test this by measuring cortisol levels - and so you choose the (stereotypically) more satisfying and rewarding dessert (cake) as a form of emotional eating and also, you know, rewarding yourself for a job well done? I mean, it's basically just saying, "Use your brain, and your brain will get tired. Both solving problems and doing something you don't want to do count as using your brain." Sure, but I hardly need an experiment to tell me that. Also, what about people who perform better under stress? Since it requires willpower to work hard and meet a deadline, and since the quality of your cognitive processing also goes up (for an initial period), doesn't that defeat the "competing for the same pool of resources" claim? Psychology is great and a lot of the unfalsifiable stuff is valuable but it's irritating when it's dressed up as science.

vidarh 13y ago
> How do you even differentiate between willpower and cognitive processing at a neurological level? It's one model, but there are other equally valid but also unfalsifiable explanations. What about anxiety goes up after working on a hard problem This may matter for some things, such as if you're doing research in the field. But there are plenty of situations where it is irrelevant, such as in the context of this article, where what matters is the overall point: Added cognitive load has been shown to result in reduced willpower. Whether or not explanation given is correct may be interesting to discuss, but it is not important to the point of the article. > I mean, it's basically just saying, "Use your brain, and your brain will get tired. Both solving problems and doing something you don't want to do count as using your brain." Sure, but I hardly need an experiment to tell me that. No, it is saying more than that. It also says that exercising willpower affects the same. That is, maintaining decisions that you do want, such as keeping to a diet, is also affected, and so counteracting desires to stick to what you consciously have decided you ant gets progressively harder if you have "used your brain" on pretty anything else. More importantly, when you say "your brain will get tired", it is misleading: Many people feel energized after spending time thinking about a puzzle, or playing a complicated game, for example. Yet as far as I remember, even when people feel they are relaxing, if they impose cognitive load, those actions will still measurably reduce your willpower for some time afterwards. You may not have needed an experiment to tell you that, but a lot of people have needed experiments to tell them that. More people should be aware of that tooo, as it makes a big difference in strategies to ensure you stick to your goals: For example, you may get better results if you make sure you go to the store when relaxed to reduce the chance of impulse buying stuff that messes up your diet. Many who diet avoid shopping for food when hungry, but few avoid shopping for food when they've spent a lot of time solving problems. In general, rest before you put yourself in situations that test your willpower, and be aware that playing your favourite mind puzzle game is not the right type of rest, even if it's fun and you feel energized afterwards. > Also, what about people who perform better under stress? Since it requires willpower to work hard and meet a deadline, and since the quality of your cognitive processing also goes up (for an initial period), doesn't that defeat the "competing for the same pool of resources" claim? You're making assumptions here that you have not justified: That it requires willpower to work hard and meet a deadline, as opposed to that it can be a total failure of willpower to allow things to wait that long in the first place and be motivated by stress; that the quality of your cognitive processing goes up (as opposed to that you actually sit down and try to do the work). Maybe you're right, but you fall straight into the same trap you accuse the psychologists behind research into willpower of doing: Ignoring other factors like anxiety.

hoi 13y ago

My take on this, is that you can create an app/site that is engaging and depletes self/control or willpower and then monetize that at the end by selling cake or equivalent. Can test if the conversion funnel for cake (or low self-contro) goods) sell more after a more 'intense' work out on the site/app.

asciimo 13y ago
I don't think that you're being facetious. But I don't care; that's an awesome takeaway. Score one for the Dark Side.
- hoi 13y ago
  Nope, not being facetious, it's a perfectly valid monetization strategy to test and pursue, in some ways, it's similar to a gaming mechanic... spend energy doing things that interest you, then pay to replenish energy, except the energy your depleting is cognitive.
  - PavlovsCat 13y ago
    In the same way rohypnol is a perfectly valid dating strategy? If the ends justify the means, just about anything is "valid" as long as it achieves the desired result.
    - hoi 13y ago
      That's being facetious since you're now using morally questionable examples and rohypnol wouldn't fit the example of buying something that relies on willpower to stop you. A better example would be, an exam revision/study website that affiliates themselves with energy drinks/bars. There isn't a requirement to buy the energy drinks to continue to use the app, but would be interesting to see if people are more inclined to buy the energy foods. Alternatively a bakery/cake website, whether they can increase conversions.
      - PavlovsCat 13y ago

areeved 13y ago

This is fascinating. For those that are interested, Daniel Kahneman discusses this in 'Thinking, Fast and Slow' too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow What I would like to know is how can we grow this limited resource?

msprague 13y ago
I'm reading that book right now and I absolutely love it.

hsuresh 13y ago

For those interested in this topic, Daniel Kahneman's book "Thinking, fast and slow" is an excellent resource. He refers to 2 systems in our brain, and how they interplay when making everyday decisions. Fascinating read.

marcamillion 13y ago

Like the other commenters, so glad that Kathy is blogging again. That being said, I am glad that she has finally verbalized what I have always felt. As the only person running 5KMVP, I have always found that it is hard for me to do things like marketing, and customer relations/support on the same day I do development. That would also negatively impact my performance of both. But now that I have people working with, I can concentrate on interacting with my clients without feeling guilty (i.e. knowing that the rest of my day is dead, from a development perspective). Also, this explains the logic behind Steve Jobs always choosing a black turtleneck, blue jeans and sneakers. If he has 1 less thing to make a decision about, his life is much easier. I have recently adopted that, and am trying to simplify my wardrobe as much as I can. This also impacts how I schedule 'outside' events. If I have to go to an event outside of the house, that usually means no coding for me on that day. I can't quite explain why - other than the mere fact that I know I have to go out, is enough of a distraction to make me not be able to 'get into the zone'. Glad to know that I am not deficient in anyway, and it is just being depleted from the same 'cognitive tank'.

winfred 13y ago

Now take it one step further, not just your UI, that's peanuts next to that big elephant in the room. Each ad you make me watch, requires a little bit of my willpower. I have to ignore its message, resist clicking on that nice looking lady. Your ad based revenue model is making me fat way faster than your UI will ever be able to do.

teej 13y ago

This is bothering me, but first image is inaccurate. They were asked to memorize a two-digit number (like 17) or a seven-digit number (like 8675309). The image shows 2 two-digit numbers and 7 two-digit numbers. This is important as our working memory capacity has been shown to be about seven digits. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_... It's a minor detail, but an important one. EDIT: It looks like the image has been updated. Thanks Kathy!

noloqy 13y ago
It bothered me a bit too. What also bothered me was that I'm not sure if the conclusion of the research is correct. At least, from the fact that people who were asked to memorize more, we can't deduce that willpower and cognitive processing draw from the same pool of resources. The conclusion could be correct (and I confess that I haven't read the paper), but there is one other obvious reason that may be possible. If I do physical exercise, I have an easier time allowing myself to eat some chocolate. If I work a long day, I have an easier time allowing myself to sit down and watch TV for a while. If I solve a difficult puzzle, I have an easier time allowing myself to do something fun. I like to believe that this is not the result of my lacking willpower after cognitive processing or physical exercise, but of a moral justification that it related to the quid pro quo principle: if I do something good, I have deserved the right to do something bad.
- samastur 13y ago
  What you described is exactly how lack of will power looks like. You find rationalization, an argument why it is OK to do something you otherwise would prefer not to do (eat cake, avoid work-out...). I've always had to pay attention to my weight and the difficult part is persuading yourself not to make an exception no matter how compelling the argument for it looks like (and "deserve" is one of the more difficult ones).
  - noloqy 13y ago
    I see your point and you're right. Thanks for sharing :)

matthiasb 13y ago

Now I know why my dog stopped working on his Kong... he's spoiled!

ibejoeb 13y ago

That's pretty neat. I understand why so many folks reject the claims here, but the observation itself is very interesting. It certainly seems that highly successful, highly visible people (creatives, executives, politicians) tend, disproportionally, to exhibit behavioral problems (addiction, suicide, etc.) I don't know if it really is disproportionate, but if so, is it related to their exertion, or depletion, as the author puts is? Is it the visibility and the accompanying scrutiny? Maybe it's the other way around, and the underlying psychological makeup propels short-term performance. Very interesting stuff, especially in context of burn-out.

eagsalazar2 13y ago

Not to be too cynical but this really seems like a dangerous insight for people optimizing conversions. Hmm, everyone wants my product but it is wasteful/bad for me/a luxury/etc? Just deplete their ability to resist first. Ooops, someone trying to cancel their subscription? How about a nice maze of forms to get through first? Anyway, the super cool insight of this article is the relationship between cognitive load and will power. We all knew "try harder" didn't work. Simplify everything else is a way more powerful way to manage your motivation and it makes it super clear that you can really only do a certain number of things. When your motivation turns to procrastination, it isn't some "problem" you are having, it is you simply hitting your cognitive limit for the day/week/month. Awesome.

gohrt 13y ago
This is of course how sales actually works. That's why there are 700 models of camera -- to get you focused on which one you want, not whether you even need it or if there is a competitor you should look at.

jjindev 13y ago

Dan Ariely's Coursera on Irrational Behavior spent much time on current research in these areas. Very interesting (and a good/fun course, should it come around again).

PaperclipTaken 13y ago

Anecdotal evidence is not scientific, but this makes a lot of sense in the context of my life. At work, when I hit a tough problem, I'm much more likely to tab over to HN or reddit, yet I've found that somehow I manage to hit the deadlines at the same pace regardless of how much I force myself to focus. I do think though while you might be drawing from one 'pool', it's a pool that you can work to expand. To me this seems to be the same vein of psychology that makes ADHD medicine ineffective for kids on the long term. There's one pool of resources you are drawing from but like muscular strength you aren't doomed to your current limits.

manmal 13y ago
Yes! My pool was quite drained 1 or 2 years ago, but I managed to enlarge it by taking longer breaks, shutting down completely on weekends, eliminating foods I'm intolerant to (gluten & lactose inflame my gut pretty quickly), introducing intermittent fasting (no food until noon), adding fish oil and vit D, switching from cardio to HIIT workouts, and keeping caffeine intake constant. I can now be highly productive for at least 7-8h per day, and then still focus on my family (vs turning into a couch zombie). Lack of sleep (< 6h; optimum is 8h) still kills me though. I think intermittent fasting and fish oil did the most for me in this regard. Since quality of sleep is really important to my focus, it might be worth mentioning that zinc supplements do a lot for me here (but at least this remedy is purely anecdotal).

lancefisher 13y ago

I'm glad she's back. I always enjoyed reading her articles back when blogs were new.

astral303 13y ago

Sadly, when it comes to app reviews from tech blogs and publications, the cognitive load placed on the user is rarely ever noticed or highlighted, unless it's so high that it's unbearable. Instead, apps often get bonus points for eye candy and gratuitous, but cool-looking animation. Nobody ever writes "wow, I got a bunch of things done and I didn't even notice the interface details." This is particularly bad in the geek community, as we are used to high cognitive load (configuring X anyone?), and so we brush off any complaints about it as "stupid" or "computer illiterate." One early app example is all the gas mileage tracking apps. Damn near every one of them in the early iPhone days had the spinning odometer control and the spinning gas number controls (where you spin each number up and down, like a key combo). I recall being infuriated by those designs, because all I really wanted to do was to quickly enter the odometer or the gallons and dealing with spinning those damn digits was NOT at all quick. Compared to the effortless/mindless act of typing into a digit keypad, spinner controls required much more cognitive load (did I spin too fast, will it go too far? Let me catch it at the right digit. Which digit do I need to push up or down to make it match what's on my real odo?).

mrxd 13y ago
Well, yeah but... no. Cognitive load is not really about speed or animation taking up time.

hheide 13y ago

Actually the the app doesn't make you fat. The resource that is burned is sugar. To replenish it you need one piece of candy. After which you'll be as able to make decisions as you ever was. (But Burger king won't tell you, since they don't make money from candy.)

deleted 13y ago
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fauigerzigerk 13y ago

"Willpower and cognitive processing draw from the same pool of resources." I don't see how that follows from the the memorization experiment. Maybe the people who could remember 7 items felt they worked hard so they deserved to be rewarded with a chocolate cake.

markild 13y ago
My thoughts exactly. I don't know about the original paper, but the article doesn't even seem to discuss the possibility of other conclusions.
h3st 13y ago
> Maybe the people who could remember 7 items felt they worked hard so they deserved to be rewarded with a chocolate cake. That would be what depleted willpower feels like, assuming you like chocolate cake and prefer it over the other option. Depleted willpower doesn't really feel like much in itself, just an increased likelihood of thinking "oh wow, chocolate cake" over "cake? doesn't fit my macros".
- fauigerzigerk 13y ago
  I'm sure we could all come up with tons of other similar interpretations, but what is this other than pure speculation?
- yeahrightdbag 13y ago
  How do we know it's not an increased sense of entitlement rather than a reduction of willpower?

ankeshk 13y ago

While I agree with the thesis, a contradictory point comes to mind. We just don't know a lot about how cognitive resources are utilized. Long distance runners know this. Athletes know this. The whole concept of "second wind". Where they find the strength to better their game using way less resources -- after they have been tired. Some type of cognitive resource depletion gives people even more energy and motivation. While I agree that things should be made simpler and we shouldn't over-gamify things, I don't think we should make decisions with the cake / fruits question in mind. That just provides a framework to dumb things down. We will never enable the users to hit their second wind if they never get tasks that make them crave cakes. I guess my point is: simplicity is good. Simplicity to the point of dumbness is not.

tetha 13y ago
Also, another important thing to realize is: Simplicity is ambiguous and highly dependent on the target group. Or, put in other words, certain choices that might look hard or certain mechanisms that look complicated might end up being simple. For example, in a small project, the simplest possible solution for a problem was to throw the full power of regexes at the user. Why? Because the audience was a number of developers who knew regexes and they needed the ability to match some strings. In a similar vein, if my mom is cooking, it is actually simpler if the recipe doesn't give her a billion choices how to do a simple step, just tell her that one step. She'll do it the way she likes. So, simplicity is actually pretty complicated, and removing the wrong choices and possibilities might make your program a lot harder to use.

dreamfactory 13y ago

Why is this considered the moral responsibility of the app creator and not the consumer? Seems to be a highly immature viewpoint where the consumer doesn't take responsibility for how they live their life.

xenophanes 13y ago

This is so stupid. The experiment can be explained in many different ways and she just picks a trendy one. Another explanation is people who did harder work were more tired and hungry, or felt more like rewarding themselves. I don't particularly favor this explanation; I have no idea what is the right explanation; and that's the point, the experiment doesn't tell us. She also ignores that for some people it takes more willpower to eat the cake. It can go either way depending on a person's ideas. She just assumes everyone has currently trendy ideas wherein fruit bowls are unpleasant but virtuous and people use willpower to eat them. But many other lifestyles are possible. For example, one might think cake is more delicious but they are scared of getting fat so it requires willpower to enjoy eating it instead of giving in to the fear, whereas the fruit bowl is easy to eat because there's no pressure against it, so it's the easy default.

algorias 13y ago
Another example: I am a chocolate lover and would take the fruit, because chocolate cake (especially the free variety) has a tendency of tasting worse than it looks.
alexhawdon 13y ago
Although it doesn't necessarily do away with the entire message, I'm with you in thinking that the premise is a bit of a stretch. My initial guess at a reasonable explanation was that we're more inclined to believe we deserve a treat/reward after doing work, and memorising a long number is obviously more 'work' than memorising a short one.

yutyut 13y ago

Perhaps the conclusions drawn by the experiment (if they are correctly paraphrased in the post; I didn't read the full paper yet: http://www.d.umn.edu/~dglisczi/4501web/4501Readings/Shiv(1999)FruitOrCake.pdf http://www.d.umn.edu/~dglisczi/4501web/4501Readings/Shiv(199...) are valid but I think it would be pertinent to consider that perhaps rather than being 'cognitively taxed', those 7-number participants simply felt that they worked harder and therefore deserved a better prize. I often find myself making similar justifications if I've pushed myself hard in a workout or followed my diet faithfully. It would be interesting to see an experiment that 'cognitively taxes' participants by having them perform a task that is not considered positive. Memorizing a number elicits a feeling of accomplishment that may contribute to the justification I described above.

yutyut 13y ago
Non-broken link to the paper: http://www.d.umn.edu/~dglisczi/4501web/4501Readings/Shiv(1999)FruitOrCake.pdf
- mjolk 13y ago
  The other link worked for me, but thank you for your phrasing -- 'link to the' is the first thing that I did after scanning the blog post and this comment reply was helpful.
vidarh 13y ago
> those 7-number participants simply felt that they worked harder and therefore deserved a better prize. That is exactly how you expect reduced willpower to play out in practice in a situation where people are forced to make a conscious choice (as opposed to just absent-mindedly picking something). Nobody "just" takes the option that is counter to their long term goals, they rationalise the choice either then and there or afterwards, and rationalisations that we "deserve" something or are morally justified are amongst the easiest for us to grab onto.
- yutyut 13y ago
  I'm not sure whether you're agreeing or disagreeing with me here.

tcskeptic 13y ago

Based on this I would think that the conversion rate on the TURBOTAX offer to subtract the cost of the service from your return for a HUGE 100% fee (meaning the cost of that method of payment is as much as the tax service itself) but allows you to skip the entering of your CC information, given that it comes at the end of doing your taxes, is probably pretty high. They should try a cake add on.

mmilo 13y ago

Anyone notice hitting the escape key sends you to a squarespace login screen? Seems like an odd thing to have turned on by default.

dschiptsov 13y ago

Statistically caught correlation does not imply the assusmed causation you wish to "prove". The guys who memorize numbers might associate a cake with a reward and choose it just in order to reward oneself for a meaningless and boring waste of time they choose by mistake, while in 2 digits group it wasn't counted even as a joke. As for willpower/self-control - hormonal levels are almost always the major factors. Just do the silly experiments which are "considered unethical" involving "images from those magazines" and you will notice lots of correlations.) The famous experiment with tape-recorded heart-beats is the beautiful one. Again, trying to find a single cause in psychology is kind of naive. The theoretical framework advocated by Marvin Minsky of constant competition of multitude of semi-independent agencies (specialized regions of the brain) helps to develop the notion of multiple causation. My guess is that if one would nail a poster of a fit bikini girl to a wall, the number of cakes chosen will be reduced dramatically, everything else being equal. But for a pony psychology the article is perfectly OK.)

moomin 13y ago

She's back, the article's great, all is right with the world. Let's read the first comment... oh. Seriously, I thought the article was great. It would be great even if it wasn't written by Kathy Sierra.

harishankar 13y ago

I always knew that thinking a lot made me hungry. And tired. Mental work is quite as tiring to the mind as physical work is to the body and muscles. The article is well written, but I found nothing particularly new in that viewpoint.

ludoo 13y ago

Sitting all day on a chair, then going home to sit in front of a TV makes you fat, not exercising willpower and using your brain...

vannevar 13y ago

Grad students and dogs, sure. But how do we know these findings apply to humans?

lkrubner 13y ago

Yesterday on HN there was a link to this story: http://www.penny-arcade.com/report/article/swimming-in-a-sea-of-shit-the-internets-war-against-creatives http://www.penny-arcade.com/report/article/swimming-in-a-sea... Which had this quote: "This isn't something that happens to some people online, it's something that happens to everyone who has ever put any of themselves out there for public consumption." One thing that has confused me from the beginning, when Sierra first claimed that she had received death threats, was exactly why this story took on the scale that it took on. I recall at the time, of the 100 tech bloggers that I read on a regular basis, this story overshadowed everything else. I recall that previously I had been unsympathetic to Sierra because of the perception that she tended to rely on hyperbole and drama to sell her books. For that reason I was initially skeptical of her claims. Later it turned out that the 4 bloggers who harassed had clearly stepped over some line, and said some things that were at the least, very rude. As I recall, all of them later apologized (all of them were bloggers with some substantial reputations in the world of tech blogs). But given the amount of abuse that happens online on a regular basis, it seemed a little surreal to me that the story reached such a scale.

showerst 13y ago
I think it partially exploded because this wasn't some youtube celeb or musician (not that they don't have a right to be harassment free), but a _professional_ blogging about, of all things, _user experience_. There was quite a bit of 'oh, that happens online in scummy places, but surely not in my community', until people saw some of the things that were said and done.
kaitai 13y ago
The comment above (showerst) is right -- everyone says "well that happens somewhere else" until it happens right in their own community and gives the lie to "but we're not like that!" The other element is that stories like Sierra's (or the Trayvon story, or plenty of others) provide one public example at just the right time to catch a larger feeling or represent a larger problem that people are grappling with. It's a chance to hash out through a personal story how we think about "stuff".
asdasf 13y ago

6ren 13y ago

One thing that troubles me about technological progress is whether we really are making anything better. Sure, we solve one problem... but it creates problems of its own, and exposes previously hidden problems. I think this article provides something of an answer: work in itself is not a bad thing. It takes effort and concentration - it's work - but it can be enjoyable, satisfying, meaningful. But putting in effort that is wasted, by being diverted into tedious, pointless, unnecessarily complex tasks, is a bad thing. It's not enjoyable, not satisfying, not meaningful. Therefore, any technological progress that reduces that tedium is a good thing (even if it has problems of its own, or exposes other problems, provided net tedium is less). [I don't think this is the whole answer, but I think it's part of an answer (probably, things like saving lives, health, and somehow enabling people to relate better are more important goals).]

okamiueru 13y ago

Anecdotal, conjectural, and even the dubious psychological experiments she references are completely misrepresented. The subjects were told told to memorize a number, and on their way to a different room where they expected to be tested, someone stopped them mid-way and asked them to choose between two snacks -- a fruit salad and a cake. The people who had been told to memorize many digits didn't choose the healthy snack as frequent as the people who had been told to memorize few digits (and, presumably, could focus on which choice they really preferred). It tries to convey "common sense" concepts, using conjecture and complicated constructs. It hurts my brain when I try to understand what is meant by "to use up cognitive resources". The more convoluted an explanation is, the less I feel it has been understood by the person explaining it. I have a strong distaste for psychology terms that add depth, but not clarity, as if trying to validate and give authority to the field or explanation. A bit ironic for an article trying to explain the concept of "minimizing drainage of the cognitive tank" (to paraphrase). So, what is this article really about? This -- http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Make-Me-Think-Usability/dp/0321344758 http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Make-Me-Think-Usability/dp/032134....

6ren 13y ago

If you spend the day exercising self-control (angry customers, clueless co-workers), by the time you get home your cog resource tank is flashing E. The Linus solution becomes increasingly appealing...

krmboya 13y ago

I'd guess terminal users consume more cognitive resources than GUI users. Are they on average fatter than the latter? Just a speculation.

asdasf 13y ago
Why do you guess that? I don't think there is any correlation between GUI vs terminal and cognitive load. There are simple terminal apps, and simple GUI apps. There are also complex and difficult to use terminal apps and GUI apps.
- krmboya 13y ago
  Fair point. I also remembered Robe Pike's paper: http://harmful.cat-v.org/cat-v/unix_prog_design.pdf http://harmful.cat-v.org/cat-v/unix_prog_design.pdf

NatCrodo 13y ago

I'm a fan too! I was extremely happy when I saw that she is writing again. Looking forward for more.

varelse 13y ago

A bit off-topic, but it aligns with why I find daily standups to be a soul-crushing waste of time. Scrum Master Jar Jar (http://softwaremaestro.wordpress.com/2007/06/30/scrum-master-jar-jar/ http://softwaremaestro.wordpress.com/2007/06/30/scrum-master...) went into more detail as to why Scrum is usually run this way, but just sayin'...

dkarl 13y ago

I don't think the logic is sound. The psychological finding she's applying is that willpower is a finite cognitive resource. It isn't sound to apply that finding to all decisions you make while using an app -- only the decisions that involve willpower. She generalizes to all cognitive resources being finite... If your UX asks the user to make choices, for example, even if those choices are both clear and useful, the act of deciding is a cognitive drain. And not just while they're deciding... even after we choose, an unconscious cognitive background thread is slowly consuming/leaking resources, "Was that the right choice?" ... which sounds plausible and may well be true, but is much more general than the result she's building on. I'm inclined to think she's right, though. It would be interesting to know if the psychological research has already been done. The willpower results are only well-publicized because people have a compelling personal interest in it.

KedarMhaswade 13y ago

This is definitely very interesting. In the long run however, I think self-control/willpower works in unison with cognitive abilities, as another famous experiment -- the Marshmallow experiment, tends to conclude.

timmyelliot 13y ago

Having a user expend more cognitive energy on my app (as long as I'm not frustrating them), sounds like a good thing. It sounds like another way for them to bond. Seems like I'd rather it be my app them my competition's.

piyush_soni 13y ago

What a lame article. I know so many people are praising the author here and happy for her 'return', but if this has always been the quality of her writing, I'm not impressed. Not the mobile app, but any kind of thinking or stress will reduce your will power, and thus according to you is making you fat. So you might as well stop thinking. Or, on other side, do diet control and exercise. 2nd option is wise, according to me.