Playing with a new toy

Yes, of course, no prizes for guesses what the toy in question is – the free version of ChatGPT.

I had already given it a whirl to get inspiration for work things and then also to show off to friends for its potential to help with domestic challenges, such as menu planning. So I kind of knew what it was capable of, but I hadn’t yet tried getting it to provide the core content for a piece of writing. And as these upfront intro words and below closing bullets suggest, I did end up having to step in anyway.

So here goes with what was the final proposed text, after approx 10 additional prompts.

“The pros and cons of working from home:

Working in Canary Wharf meant that I had to endure a 90-minute commute each way, which could be quite exhausting. However, the views of the river Thames and the iconic skyscrapers towering above me always made the journey worthwhile. Despite the impressive scenery, being tied to a strict schedule and a physical location made it difficult to balance work with other aspects of my life. Now that I work from my home office in Hackney, I have the freedom to set my own schedule and take advantage of local amenities like the vibrant food scene and nearby parks.”

Hmm, not great really, for a number of different reasons.

• Mysteriously, the amount of text got shorter and shorter, going from 4/5 meaty paragraphs to the above final rather flimsy offering, despite my prompts to add in new references and bring back earlier text.
• As a result, I’ve lost some of the points I had wanted to make, such as how you “can structure your day to fit in other commitments, such as running errands, fitting in local volunteering opportunities, or going for runs at a time that suits you best. You also have more control over your environment, which can be especially beneficial if you find it hard to concentrate in a busy office. However, there are also downsides to working from home, including the temptation to snack more often and the potential for feeling isolated or disconnected from your colleagues.”
• ChatGPT has managed to slip in a quick hallucination – sadly, I don’t have a home office in Hackney with a vibrant food scene. I would rather it had slipped in something about the clean air and real nature I have in my local area (please admire pics below). Perhaps I should actually be reassured that it can’t work out where I do live!

The value of obselete objects

I was reminded of a colleague’s very thought-provoking piece on obsolete objects when wandering round the Rijksmuseum on a recent trip to the Netherlands.

We happened to start our visit to the museum in the section containing ‘things’ as oppose to pictures – ie when we were still very ‘fresh’ and attentive – with the result that I spent hours marvelling at the endless array of objects, many of which would be regarded by all of us today as obsolete.

Let me start with one of my favourites. It’s a detector lock with key. While I have to acknowledge that we still use locks and keys, there is increasing momentum around digitally-based security, especially as it is in the digital sphere there is much to protect, together with greater reliance on biometrics. What I liked about the below lock was the ingenuity involved – the keyhole is concealed behind the man’s left leg; with two complete turns of the key, the dial at which the man’s stick is pointing rotates; this records how often the lock has been opened; the doorknob is released when the man’s hat is pushed aside. I’m not sure how to describe it, but it seems to be very human, with humorous practicality blended with a sense of the aesthetic.

The idea that beauty and purpose come together in these ‘redundant’ objects is one that struck me multiple times during my visit. Just look at my next item ‘on display’: it’s a personal accessory which would have been literally ‘pointless’ even when just made but still be highly valued. Now, it would just seem really out of place. It’s a gorget (discovering these objects also meant encountering new words – a sconce, anyone?) Gorgets are essentially pieces of neck armour and ranked among the most prominent ceremonial silver of civic guard companies. They were worn by the annually appointed head or ‘king’ of the militia company – but really only to show off, not for when in battle of course. Later generations, to commemorate their term in office, added pendants of birds and shields bearing family arms and names. Perhaps gorgets could get a modern lease of life through some updating by Gaultier?

I would also like to posit a need to re-engage with materialism – we should value the objects we have beyond their functional purpose. It is a boring cliché to say that we are in a ‘throw away culture’, but it is worth highlighting the implications of this. We don’t really care about things as long as they work, and if not, we don’t want them. How about having things that we treasure whilst we use them? Look at the ridiculously over the top timepiece and the exquisite etched glass below. Compare the latter to the ubiquitous soda glasses we all have in our homes.

My final exhibit is on a twist on the all above themes. It’s a swan-necked bottle, originally from Iran but popular with Western travellers. According to romantic tradition, the distinctive spouts were used to catch the tears of women whose husbands were fighting at the front. Were these bottles ever used for what they were designed – who knows and who cares? Something can become even more precious when it is in more than one sense obsolete.

Playing the waiting game to get the gains

No one would question that it’s the right thing to go for energy efficiency in the items we use or purchase. However, beyond the immediate satisfaction of knowing that we have made a ‘good purchase’ and hopefully helped the planet in the long term, big, unfathomable scheme of things, can we actually benefit or get some kind of financial return within our own life times? Or is it actually more pricey all the way through?

Let’s explore through a couple of different items, beginning with household appliances.

Which? recently released some pretty compelling research which suggests that it is can be worthwhile going for those fancy A++++ items. They found that consumers could save £336 a year – more than £3,000 over a decade – on their energy bills and help reduce their carbon footprint just by switching to more energy efficient appliances when their old white goods need replacing. Obviously, the case is strongest for items which tend to be high energy consumers, such as tumble dryers, compared to say, ovens, and perhaps the best way to reduce energy on drying is to use an alternative system (the air, whether inside or out!).

How about electric cars? Well, these are newer types of machines and rather more sophistic than your average white good, so it doesn’t seem as though the picture is clear cut. It looks as though it depends on the model you get and how you use it as to whether the significant upfront high cost is mitigated by lower costs later on. May be you should bank on getting non-financial value in the form of smugness when the rest of the world is queuing for fuel during shortages, or whatever fuel-related calamity we are facing in that moment.

And finally, solar panels. Don’t go thinking that you’ll be able to benefit from a subsidy or good feed-in tariffs – those are no longer part of the equation. However, the cost of the panels themselves has dropped a fair bit, whilst energy costs have gone up lots, so there’s other incentives for going for it. However, it requires patience: it can take anywhere between 11 and 27 years to recoup the costs of installing panels for a typical home, perhaps longer than some people might be staying in that same property (depending on area, moves might happen every 10-25 years).

But you know what? To me, the biggest challenge would be having to go through some hardcore and pretty extensive research to work out which might be the best option, balancing all the different variables under consideration. That’s why I’m sending thanks to all those helpful people who write product reviews!

Smartening up how we use screens

Have you read Smarter Screens by Shlomo Benartzi? It’s something I’ve just finished and just wanted to take the opportunity to share some thoughts. The ideas in it didn’t come across as strikingly original – that coup went to Thinking Fast and Slow, which brought to our attention how badly but sort of efficiently we evaluate our choices and make decisions. Smarter Screens went over the same ground but through the lens of what this looks like in the digital environment. But – there is a but – Smarter Screens is still valuable as it is more literally useful. It’s full of practical examples, tools and recommendations of how to address the challenges it outlines.

Now I must confess that, for once in my life, I am in working in a setting where the business actually builds and makes things (I am not just peddling shiny ideas and fine fads). The company is digital-only, which mean that its site is the company, and therefore should be optimised, in particular given that it is product category (pensions) which won’t naturally engage people and on which they don’t tend to be willing to spend time. But now I’ve realised that it won’t be that straightforward to apply the very sensible ideas from the book. You can’t really just start over and scrap a site, saying it is too complex, too full of links, the aesthetics are not displaying the right finely tuned balance of contrast in terms of text versus white space and contrast colours, and more. It’ll probably be a case of ‘pick and mix’ coupled with a bit of ‘muddling through’.

So what did I come across that stood out? Here are five things:

1. We are more impulsive online. We are just less good all round at making decisions, and this even goes back to the basics of performing less well at reading and comprehending text compared to reviewing the equivalent information on paper. That’s rather concerning if you think about how much we now decide based on looking through what’s been displayed on a screen. And this is where the rather counterintuitive idea of creating deliberate ‘disfluency’ (making information harder to review so that it forces people to spend longer and think harder about it). Sounds fancy, but could be delivered pretty simply, for instance, by using a font that harder to read.
2. We are more ‘disinhibited’ online. We will order less healthy food and are ruder. That all seems like it’s negative, but there are situations where being less concerned about what people think can be used for the good. Think about when someone is faced with trying make decisions about their finances but aren’t too sure what the difference is between drawdown, an annuity, guidance versus advice etc and whatever other jargon and big concepts that might be thrown at people who probably can’t remember anyway what pensions they have got scattered around and who they’re with.
3. We don’t mind having to go more than three clicks if we ultimately find what we really want and complete our decision. This is worth bearing in mind as it suggests that a more nuanced approach to what might be perceived as ‘clutter’ is required. Letting people take a bit longer – the author talked about studies which involved 25 links – is fine, so long as the outcome is successful. Worth noting that this includes maintaining desktop and mobile sites, as well as posting social media
4. We need help with actual thinking, not just support with working through information (through better info architecture), and not just support with making decisions (through using behaviour architecture). People struggle to think of what they ultimately want – what the destination is – and so being forced to think some suggestions will help. It’s about prompted ranking systems; top up lists; what should people be asking themselves that they are not. These are all Big Things but so much less scary when they’ve just been turned into sets of lists to tick or pass over.
5. Now there were some ideas that didn’t quite convince. I am not sure trying to get people to connect with their future self a bit literally works. I’m thinking of a tool that is available on the Scottish Widows website which shows you what you will look like based on the age you can expect to retire given your desired income in retirement and current savings rates. I think it’s meant to shock – by letting you see how old (and ‘past it’!) you will be by the time you can stop working if you don’t save more now, and therefore you are, of course, galvanised into putting more aside. I just looked silly and then started to think about whether I spend too much time in the sun, causing all this skin damage, rather than how to reach the stage when I can stop working and not look so haggard. Or maybe the tool assumes everyone has really stressful jobs!

The future?

Do it all for me, or a little helping hand?

No one can argue with the ambition to make life a bit easier for people, but how far should meeting this go? When does help become a take-over, and suggestions become prescriptions?

I have been thinking about how, in our everyday lives, we have accepted a certain degree of help and support from the organisations we deal with. A very obvious example is Google, which offers the autocomplete service. I expect we have all become so used to it, we don’t really see it happening. But this is essentially Google at work trying to read your mind: Google explicitly call these autocomplete “predictions” rather than “suggestions,” and there’s a good reason for that. Autocomplete is designed to help people complete a search they were intending to do, not to suggest new types of searches to be performed. These are Google’s best predictions of the query we were likely to continue entering.

However, the little helps I am thinking of relate more to the fact that we are now faced with many choices, working out what’s best can actually be a chore as much as a blessing. A suggestion of what to go for then arrives as a welcome blessing.

• Amazon lets you know what people who viewed the item you are considering also looked at. And you can also see what things were bought at the same time at the time. I am interested in ‘The Weirdest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous’  and so apparently I should also be keen on the latest offering from Barack Obama. I am flattered but not convinced.
• What about Netflix, which presents its listings with a neat little score of how likely it is that I will like that content? I was in two minds about investing time in a new series, Emily in Paris, but it’s ok as apparently, it’s a 98% match. To be fair, the score has to be pretty high. If you think about it, 50% would mean 50% I like it, ie a one in two chance that I don’t! I think I might rely on what people around me recommend.

There are also places where you can need to put a bit of work in yourself first, but then can sit back and reap the rewards.

• In Ocado, you can not only look back over what you have bought before for inspiration (check out ‘Favourites’), but you can also set up your ‘Regulars’ and effectively get your repeat order ready to go for each successive order. Not for me as I am all up for a bit of variety (not many other opportunities to indulge in this fancy during lockdowns).
• Money Saving Expert recently launched a new extension to its energy switching service which it claims is the first-ever free, full energy auto-compare-and-switch tool. ‘MSE’s new tool works entirely differently to existing standard approaches in the market. Instead of bulk-switching those signed up, it essentially automates, speeds up and simplifies the individual comparison process most people should be doing for themselves. You tell it your energy preferences, the ‘Pick Me A Tariff’ tool selects your top deal based on those, and then each anniversary it notifies you of the new top tariff fitting those preferences, and lets you switch to it with just one click.’

And what’s interesting with that last example above is that not only is about making life easier (taking the hassle out of comparing offers and making choosing easier), it’s also about saving money and getting a good deal. Now if only there was a meal planner tool that sophisticated!

A life without PowerPoint

PowerPoint – love it or loathe? I’m not sure where I sit here, probably, boringly, on the fence.

But what I can tell you is there are some workplaces where using PowerPoint is the norm; and that also there are also some places where PowerPoint is a rarely clicked application on the desk top.

Experiencing the latter made me realise there are ‘unintended’ consequences of working predominantly in PowerPoint compared to predominantly not.

A very simple one is time. I personally find creating content in PowerPoint takes up a lot of time. To create visually engaging material, you have to effectively map out each slide in turn to work out where each point will be made, and how to place the supporting evidence in such a way that it reinforces what is being said but does not clutter the side. And if someone decides the point needs to be expanded or compressed, that can effectively mean starting from scratch as the content has to be re-organised and restructured on the slides differently.

Obviously, creating a visually engaging slide which consists of just one tasteful, atmospheric and evocative image would perhaps take not so long, but which type of image is appropriate and evocative in the right way is incredibly subjective. And actually, finding a good image (without copyright constraints) can be surprisingly time-consuming.

My next consequence is about telling the story. A Powerpoint, to be read solo, can often leave the reader audience short changed. Powerpoint, through its structure of separate slides, can seem like it is just a succession of points but it is hard to know how to interpret their integrated meaning – in essence, what to make of all this ‘stuff’? In fact, it could be argued that a PowerPoint is invalid unless presented with a presenter.

But it isn’t the case that points presented in Word are ‘faultless’. In Word, the succession of points happens smoothly and seamlessly, which means that the author can potentially manipulate the reader with their seductive flow, points building on points, with the connections and implications all carefully spun through. It is harder to see beyond what the author has intended in Word; we are at their mercy and easily seduced.

In my new Powerpoint-lite work world, it is even the case that seminars and conferences can take place without the usual reliance on slides and decks. People just stand up and talk, not even with notes sometimes, just a person in front of other people, saying the things that they know are important and people looking at the speaker and listening to them. In fact, the only time in this Powerpoint-lite world that I have come across glitzy slides is when consultants, the merchants of spin, have taken to the stage to sell and show off, not to share and inform.

And perhaps therein lies the clue as to the difference: my Powerpoint-lite world is far from consultancy and spin; it is the world of pensions where points needs to be carefully thought through and making the wrong choice can have consequences.

Carpe diem under duress

For a considerable part of my professional career, I worked for an organisation that aimed to help clients unlock growth. A large part of this involved thinking about being dealing with change: anticipating it, responding to it and shaping it. In those projects, a lot of energy would focus on the ‘what’ (how should we innovate; what new direction should we take to survive or thrive in the future environment; what new products or services will best meet these new needs?). In the current pandemic, there is a lot of change going on but it is not really quite the same as those snazzy and exciting consultancy projects. Now it is all too clear what is needed (more hand sanitiser, more PPE, more testing kits, more resource to get things where they should be when freedom of movement is compromised, ways to keep people happy and secure at home etc).

There are endless stories appearing of how brands and businesses are responding to the need to support the Covid 19 effort. I don’t want to list them all here but it’s interesting to see the nitty gritty details behind these glowing stories of corporate resourcefulness. Beer producer Brewdog was one of the first to ‘pivot’ (note also the new vocab we are deploying in these testing times) its operations from drinks to hand sanitiser. A blog post provides a revealing insight into what’s actually involved. ‘Due to demand, there is a real shortage of suitable types of packaging so you will need to get creative here. So far we have filled 50ml glass bottles, 100ml glass bottles, 100ml plastic bottles, 200ml plastic bottles and larger containers too. We have even filled some 110ml mini beer bottles when no other type of packaging was available.’

And here is an example of a more straightforward ‘I see a gap in the market – ‘let’s go for it’ response. Supplydrop was ‘created to supply you with everything you might want/need to thrive under lockdown.’ It has a growing range of packages, from the pamper kit, the germ killer kit, the birthday kit and the survival kit.

In my household, we have our example of flexible thinking and making do. We were due to go on holiday to Cyprus. Instead, we went there ‘at home’. For two days, we drew and cut out local birds, dotted them around the house in various locations representing different habitats, and then rounded it off with a local meal, complete with Greek salad, fresh hummus, pitta bread and halloumi, all serenaded by Greek music and under a blue sky. Almost as good as the real thing – at least we didn’t have to negotiate Stansted airport to get there!

Making it big

How do you view the world and which criteria do you use to determine who is ‘top dog’? If you focus on landmass, then Russia does pretty well; if you look at GDP, it’s the US that comes out as number one; taking population brings China to the fore; and so on.

And then if we think about how these countries got there, it changes the picture yet again. I like thinking in terms of systems and stories, but having just read Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall, I have understood there is another way to frame country narratives. And thinking about things in this way has made some current dynamics clearer/easier to comprehend.

This is best exemplified by focussing on Africa. Over the years, this continent is subject to great paeans about its future potential (as yet unrealised) but which are now ‘almost there’. Why is this?

Well, it’s worth remembering that Africa actually has a head start – it’s where Home Sapiens originated 200,000 years ago. Though Africa is a great place overall and in terms of the specific regions within it (which contain a huge amount of diversity across many different dimensions), what they have in common is isolation: isolation from each other as well as from the outside world. This is significant as this stops the all-important flow of ideas that drive progress.

Let’s come in a little closer. There is the Sahel which cuts across the top third of the country, and whilst the north, in particular those places with access to the Mediterranean and technologies, agriculture innovation and trade from Europe, managed to develop and change , below the Sahel, it’s quite different. Here, there are few plants willing to be domesticated, and animals even less so. Much of the land is jungle, swamp, desert or steep-sided plateau, none of which is good for growing crops or grazing for easy livestock, such as sheep. There is a good quote from Jared Diamond which reinforces this point: “History might have turned out differently if African armies, fed by barnyard-giraffe meat and backed by waves of cavalry mounted on huge rhinos, had swept into Europe to overrun its mutton-fed soldiers mounted on puny horses.”

And then there is challenge of getting goods in and out. Africa has lots of rivers, but they aren’t much use in this regard as they begin in high land and descent in abrupt drops which thwarts navigation. Going to the sea doesn’t improve the situation much: there are few natural harbours – the coast line across much of Africa is too smooth (where can ships aggregate safely together if that is the case?) and around the beaches the water is too shallow.

However, perhaps some of the ‘challenges’ can now come into their own as the means by which we rely on sharing ideas and goods have changed. For example, those same rivers that hampered trade are now being harnessed for hydro-electric power. That’s one bright spot in the prison of geography. Let’s see how long it takes for more to make a real difference.

 

Choice or no choice – which path to take to make all the difference?

I think we are used to the idea – in fact take it for granted – that we can make choices across many different aspects of our life, going from the routine, such as choice of breakfast cereal, to the more significant, such as choice of school or doctor.

In an earlier journal entry, I highlighted the extent of choice now available in the world of pensions. And what I wanted to emphasise was that this choice is full of complexity and very hard to navigate. There is, in fact, an argument for saying that, in certain situations, individuals and/or society might be better off if choice was removed and the default made the only option.

In the world of sustainability, which is another area full of difficult choices hard for the layman to accurately evaluate in terms of what is best for them or the planet, similar dynamics are at play. In some cases, it is ‘better’ all round to take choice away and put the ‘best option’ as the default. Free-range eggs are now sold in greater volumes than cage-farmed ones in the UK, in large part because major players, from retailers, such as Sainsburys, to food service operators and manufacturers, for example Hellmann’s mayonnaise from Unilever to MacDonalds, have gone free-range, reducing demand for caged eggs.

In pensions, both the share and absolute number of people saving into a pension has increased massively. This is not to do with more choice but a default option being brought in – namely auto-enrolment. And now there are plans to introduce ‘choice reduction’ in other elements of the retirement journey. As part of a recent extensive review of retirement outcomes, the FCA proposed that pension providers offer non-advised customers a choice of four investment pathways to best meet their retirement objectives – much simpler than having to work out if/how much money to take out now or later and what/how to save for later.

In other tricky markets, such as energy and other utilities where consumers can switch and choose but often don’t, other developments are afoot. In October 2018, Ofgem announced that it would be introducing price caps. This has meant that suppliers have to cut their prices to the level of or below the cap, forcing them to scrap excess charges for people on poor value default deals. https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications-and-updates/ofgem-proposes-price-cap-give-11-million-customers-fairer-deal-their-energy

In the face of increasing use of defaults and market intervention, strengthening the paternalistic perspective (‘we know best’), has peak choice had its moment?

 

The future was present – at the V&A

Was it really? The above is a mangled abbreviation of a quote from sci-fi author William Gibson. The full version (“The future is already here. It’s just not evenly distributed yet.”) is much beloved of people who work in ‘futures thinking’ (I’m avoiding the labels ‘futurists’ and ‘futurologists’).  Occasionally, yes, this statement does come through as a pretty good way of looking at the world.

My latest reinforcement of its validity came when I visited a recent exhibition at the V&A rather impressively titled ‘The Future Starts Here – 100 projects shaping the world of tomorrow’. I record my impressions through a series of observations.

Firstly, I should acknowledge that it was a good excuse to go to the V&A and inspect the new entrance – a rather interesting mixture of textures with different shades of white stone, as well as some fine wood structures (but those was only temporary, I think).

Then there was the descent into the exhibition space itself – a dark area with no natural daylight – is that telling about what is envisioned for the future? But luckily there was lots of lighting and colour to bring out the exhibits around which you gradually wound your way.

Unsurprisingly, there were the obligatory techie items – robots, AI, smart objects that capture and analysis data – but also, later on, objects which are low-tech versions of the technologies we now have come to rely on – phones and internet access. I applaud a view of the future which sees the need for regression as well as progression in innovation.

There were a fair number of objects which were familiar to me, either the items themselves or the core concepts behind them. Examples include a restaurant setting meant to be inviting to the increasing number likely to be living ‘single’ and thus wanting to be able to eat out alone without feeling uncomfortable. There was also a bottle of Soylent on the table too – not sure about that one.

There was also a special personal cleansing care range, designed in response to the fact we now go to considerable effort to stay very clean and effectively remove all bacteria and dirt from the skin, despite the fact, just like the inside of our bodies, our skin also relies on good bacteria to be healthy. Hence the need for Motherdirect, which uses special bacteria called AOB (Ammonia Oxidizing Bacteria) to help convert the irritating components of sweat and turn them into beneficial byproducts like Nitrite and Nitric Oxide, which help to calm and soothe the skin.

Motherdirt was an item that is already being commercialised. There were some exhibits that have been in existence – conceptually at least – for many years but as a completed project, remain indefinitely in the future. See here a fabulous city – clean and smart – which uses the latest technologies and will be completely powered by the sun, or something like that.

There were objects that are more about hope than rigorous assessments of what might be possible in the future. In contrast to the shiny technology devices, one case contained the pink ‘pussy hat’ which was developed to make a bold and powerful visual statement of solidarity in support of women’s rights and against Trump, ideally to be worn at the Women’s Marches that have taken place in numerous countries in recent months. Yes, a symbol for hope because Trump is still around and who knows how much has actually changed for women?

My final observation is very simple – I have chosen it to illustrate the fact that looking ahead into the future, we have to recognise that actually lots of how we live we still be very similar. There are certain aspects of everyday living which are remarkably resistant to change, in particular what we eat and drink. There was an exhibit displaying a coffee machine designed by Lavazza to allow people in space to still be able to have a good cup of coffee. Probably quite important actually!