Human Systems and Behavior

The Empathy Engine: Re-engineering Product Management for the Human Age 1 The Empathy Engine – Part 1: From Feature Wars to the Soul of the Product 2 The Empathy Engine – Part 2: Mastering Product-Market Fit through Market Signals and Community 3 The Empathy Engine – Part 3: Extracting Innovation Gold from Behavioral Research 4 The Empathy Engine – Part 4: Crafting Product Stance and the Emotional Value Proposition 5 The Empathy Engine – Part 5: Design Doing and the New Product Manager's Artifacts ← Series Home Product development success hinges on a critical pivot: zooming past broad market trends to focus intensely on individual human behaviors and aspirations. When Joe McQuaid, the LiveWell chief product officer, observed a yoga instructor, he sought data on physical tracking but unexpectedly uncovered a prevailing theme of mental health and anxiety. This qualitative turn illustrates that understanding what people do is secondary to grasping how they feel and why they act. ...

The Logic of Successful Systems Decisions 1 The Logic of Successful Systems Decisions - Part 1: Defining Decision Quality and the Systems Imperative 2 The Logic of Successful Systems Decisions - Part 2: Problem Definition: Solving the Right Challenge 3 The Logic of Successful Systems Decisions - Part 3: Solution Design: Engineering Creativity and Feasibility 4 The Logic of Successful Systems Decisions - Part 4: Decision Making: Quantifying Value, Risk, and Tradeoffs 5 The Logic of Successful Systems Decisions - Part 5: Solution Implementation: Delivering the Promised Value ← Series Home DOE Design of Experiments: Testing synergistic interactions of design factors ...

The Bounded Mind ← Series Home The High Price of Untested Belief Managers commonly rely on intuition and experience-based insights, often leading them to apply solutions to problems they have yet to fully understand. This default managerial style is often characterized by the plunging-in bias: rushing forward with a solution long before gathering data, finding alternatives, or engaging in analysis. Conversely, some highly analytical managers find themselves paralyzed, agonizing over multiple alternatives and over-analyzing a problem until the moment for effective action has passed. Both extremes—the impetuous and the overly cautious—share a common vulnerability: making decisions based on untested, unvalidated assumptions. ...

The Architecture of Choice ← Series Home The Hubris of Constructive Rationality In the wake of behavioral economics demonstrating that people make systematic errors, policymakers often adopt a philosophy known as “constructive rationality”. This philosophy assumes that central planners—often equipped with academic insights—can understand market realities in their totality and consciously design institutions or “nudges” superior to those that evolve spontaneously. However, this perspective risks what Friedrich Hayek termed the “knowledge problem”: the vast, dispersed, subjective, and tacit nature of individual knowledge, which central authorities can never fully absorb or process. ...

The Strategic Mind of the Modern Consumer 1 The Strategic Mind of the Modern Consumer – Part 1: How Cognitive Biases Undermine Rational Choice 2 The Strategic Mind of the Modern Consumer – Part 2: Persuasion as a Science: Navigating the Elaboration Likelihood Model 3 The Strategic Mind of the Modern Consumer – Part 3: Anchors, Decoys, and Dissonance: The Psychology of Price and Loyalty 4 The Strategic Mind of the Modern Consumer – Part 4: Beyond Utility: Status, Identity, and the Allure of Luxury Goods 5 The Strategic Mind of the Modern Consumer – Part 5: Digital Identity and Social Proof: Building Trust in the Online Ecosystem 6 The Strategic Mind of the Modern Consumer – Part 6: Ideological Consumption: When Political Values Dictate Brand Preference 7 The Strategic Mind of the Modern Consumer – Part 7: Tomorrow's Terrain: Forecasting Crises, Sustainability, and Technological Shifts ← Series Home The Cost of Value: Where Economics Meets Emotion The nexus of consumer behavior and pricing is a primary determinant of market success. Pricing strategies are not simply mathematical calculations but intricate tools used to transform consumer perceptions, influence purchase decisions, and solidify market positioning. Consumers rarely evaluate prices in isolation; instead, they measure them against their perceived value of the product or service, creating an ephemeral construct crucial for market interactions. ...

When Disaster Strikes 1 Part 1: Disasters Don't Create Inequality-They Reveal It 2 Part 2: Why Some Cities Burn (And Others Don't) 3 Part 3: The Sacrifice Calculus 4 Part 4: Elite Disaster Strategies 5 Part 5: Famine and Political Power 6 Part 6: Earthquakes and Governance 7 Part 7: Pandemic Politics 8 Part 8: Why We Forget ← Series Home Key Takeaways Triage is always happening: Disasters make explicit the resource allocation decisions that are implicit in normal times. Infrastructure is frozen triage: Decisions about levees, evacuation routes, and hospital locations pre-determine who can be saved. The "natural" framing hides choices: Calling disasters "natural" obscures the political decisions that shaped who became vulnerable. Sacrifice patterns are predictable: The poor, the elderly, the disabled, and the politically marginalized consistently bear the highest death rates. The Impossible Choice In the five days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, Dr. Anna Pou faced decisions no physician should have to make. At Memorial Medical Center, cut off from evacuation, without power for air conditioning or most medical equipment, she and her colleagues worked to keep patients alive. ...

Cognitive Architecture 1 The Tyranny of the Fovea 2 Maps of the Invisible 3 The Syntax of Choice 4 Designing the Better Human ← Series Home The Language of the Experts In the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke, the line “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate” became a cultural touchstone for misunderstanding. In product design, this failure often occurs because the company speaks a different language than its customers. An insurance agent might casually discuss a “PLUP,” while a customer simply wants to know if they are covered for a lawsuit. Words are not just strings of sounds; they are associated with deep semantic concepts that differ based on expertise. To bridge this gap, designers must master the lexicon of their audience, meeting them at their specific level of sophistication. ...

The Architecture of Illusion: A History of the Rational Market Myth 1 The Early Days: When Science First Met Unpredictable Prices 2 The Ascent of Statistical Man: Quantifying Risk and Reward 3 The Zenith of Rationality: The Efficient Market Takes Hold 4 The Behavioral Incursion: Finding the Limits of Market Logic 5 The Final Reckoning: Why Perfect Models Fail the Real World ← Series Home The Unbeatable Index By the 1960s, academic finance was armed with sophisticated mathematical models for portfolio construction and asset pricing. The next logical step was confirming the ultimate tenet of rational finance: that the aggregate decisions of many competing participants rendered the market nearly impossible to outperform. This idea found its most potent expression in Chicago, where statistics professor Harry Roberts and economist Paul Samuelson formalized the random walk hypothesis. The movement gained major popular traction when data from the Center for Research on Security Prices (CRSP) showed that an investor who randomly selected stocks and held them from 1926 through 1960 would have earned an average annual return of 9 percent. CRSP director James Lorie explicitly noted that mutual funds performed no better than “monkeys with darts”. The lesson was severe: if professional skill couldn’t reliably beat random chance, the market must possess a self-correcting wisdom. ...

The Unseen Architecture of Survival 1 Why Predictable Systems Collapse 2 The Genius of the "Dumb" Collective 3 Rites of Terror as Social Superglue 4 Mindful Organizing Against Normalization 5 The Ethos of Optionality ← Series Home The Paradox of Pointless Action Anthropologists have long struggled with the Ritual Paradox: rituals are performed at great cost, yet their stated goals—such as a rain dance causing rain—are causally opaque, having no direct physical effect. Nonetheless, humans are instinctively drawn to ceremonies, readily developing highly rigid and repetitive behaviors in stressful situations. This is not a mental glitch, but an evolutionary adaptation; by imposing predictability on chaotic situations, ritual serves as an efficient psychological mechanism to cope with anxiety and stress. ...

The Geometry of Power: Shaping Behavior Through Design 1 The Geometry of Power – Part 1: The Open Office and the Panoptic Gaze 2 The Geometry of Power – Part 2: The Transparency Paradox: Why Privacy Boosts Productivity 3 The Geometry of Power – Part 3: Architecture of the Self: Territoriality and Psychological Sanctuaries 4 The Geometry of Power – Part 4: The Urban Blueprint: How City Design Materializes Political Control ← Series Home The spaces humans inhabit profoundly shape behavior and psychological states, often working silently beneath our conscious awareness. Beyond utility, the environment communicates with its occupants, influencing emotional weight, focus, and security,. The layout of a room, the quality of light, and the texture of materials all combine to affect decisions and mood,,. ...