Tuesday, June 21, 2011

feedback loops

are changing what people do

feedback loop: Provide people with information about their actions in real time (or something close to it), then give them an opportunity to change those actions, pushing them toward better behaviors. Action, information, reaction.
  1. data: A behavior must be measured, captured, and stored. This is the evidence stage
  2. information relayed to individual, not in the raw-data form in which it was captured but in a context that makes it emotionally resonant. This is the relevance stage.
  3. consequence. The information must illuminate one or more paths ahead. 
  4. action. There must be a clear moment when the individual can recalibrate a behavior, make a choice, and act. Then that action is measured, and the feedback loop can run once more, every action stimulating new behaviors that inch us closer to our goals.
giving speeders redundant information with no consequence would somehow compel them to do something few of us are inclined to do: slow down.
interesting concept in regard to Blessed Unrest's mention of Slow Movement, noted esp by Carlos Petrini's 1986 startup of slow food, encouraging to slow down and taste, going so far as to say that taste is evolution itself, that everyday your mouth connects to a place. combating our urges to do things fast and miss out - on life.

The true power of feedback loops is not to control people but to give them control. It’s like the difference between a speed trap and a speed feedback sign—one is a game of gotcha, the other is a gentle reminder of the rules of the road. The ideal feedback loop gives us an emotional connection to a rational goal.

We’re consuming so many things without thinking about them—energy, plastic, paper, calories.   
helps us to notice more

feedback taps into something core to the human experience, even to our biological origins. Like any organism, humans are self-regulating creatures, with a multitude of systems working to achieve homeostasis.

Feedback loops are how we learn, whether we call it trial and error or course correction. In so many areas of life, we succeed when we have some sense of where we stand and some evaluation of our progress. Indeed, we tend to crave this sort of information; it’s something we viscerally want to know, good or bad. As Stanford’s Bandura put it, “People are proactive, aspiring organisms.” Feedback taps into those aspirations.
how tests should be seen..

The Internet of Things isn’t about the things; it’s about us.
reminds of What Tech Wants, Kelly

ordered Pentland's Honest Signals

thanks for the convo Jim, Adam, Amy, Barry, and Everett
heading into year 3 - we're looking for more natural feedback loops. our latest thinking - a private video booth where kids go once a week to record what they notice, dream, connect, do (our detox-process of learning to learn) - possibly along the lines of Deb Roy's birth of a word.
[last year we gathered over 500 raw footage videos of kids talking and doing.. but we're seeking something more systematic, objective, consistent...]
thanks for the article Amy