Walking down the cereal aisle today, I observed three dis­tinctly dif­fer­ent box designs for Grape-Nuts Trail Mix Crunch. A week ear­lier, I had noticed only two of of the three and assumed that they were tran­si­tion­ing in a new look. But today, three entirely dif­fer­ent boxes were on the shelf, each one con­tain­ing exactly the same prod­uct. (Yes, I com­pared the ingre­di­ents and nutri­tion “facts” tables.)

This, despite claims that the mid­dle prod­uct had a “great taste and lighter crunch” (always an impor­tant fac­tor, no?), while the cereal on the right had “MORE! Raisins & Almonds,” a state­ment which, one could argue, does not make any par­tic­u­lar claim due to its bro­ken gram­mat­i­cal struc­ture. It will form asso­ci­a­tions in people’s minds, just as men­tion­ing “Iraq” and “Osama bin Laden” in the same breath will, but only because peo­ple are lazy, and not because of any truth­ful or mean­ing­ful claim. The box on the left does not men­tion Grape-Nuts at all.

Can any­one sug­gest a rea­son­able expla­na­tion for this? Could they be market-testing mul­ti­ple designs to see which one sells best?

As part of my research, I’m look­ing into the psy­chol­ogy of crowds, and what makes some “crowd” expe­ri­ences pos­i­tive, and oth­ers neg­a­tive. I had an expe­ri­ence recently that Joe sug­gested I doc­u­ment here.

In line at Boston Logan, I waited impa­tiently with hun­dreds of other peo­ple, brac­ing myself for the mad rush that hap­pens just before and after the metal detec­tor. You used to be able to put your bags on the con­veyor belt and walk through, but now get­ting through secu­rity involves no fewer than 13 sep­a­rate steps, depend­ing on how you count them:

1. Remove any liq­uids and lap­tops from your luggage.
2. Place your lug­gage on the con­veyor belt.
3. Place your lap­top on the con­veyor belt, in its own bin.
4. Remove your shoes.
5. Remove your jacket.
6. Remove your belt (if any) and empty your pock­ets of every­thing -- wal­let, keys, change -- except for your board­ing pass! You will need that in a moment.
7. Place your shoes, jacket, belt, and pocket con­tents in a bin on the con­veyor belt.
8. Add to that bin a small plas­tic, reseal­able bag which con­tains any liq­uids or lotions that you want to take on the plane with you. Oh, and of those items, not one may exceed 3 fluid ounces. (Note that this step requires exten­sive prepa­ra­tion prior to arriv­ing at the airport.)
9. Wait until a TSA agent gives you a blank stare, which is your indi­ca­tion to pro­ceed through the metal detector.
10. Get scolded by the TSA agent for not hold­ing on to your board­ing pass, as instructed in step 6.
11. Deflect nasty looks given to you by the 8,000 trav­el­ers in line behind you as every­one waits for your board­ing pass to be retrieved from the gray bin.
12. TSA agent now allows you to pass, hav­ing ver­i­fied that you are in pos­ses­sion of a lit­tle scrap of paper that any 5-year-old could have mocked up in MacPaint.
13. Collect all your belong­ings, repack your bag, apply anti-fungal foot cream (aerosol vari­eties pro­hib­ited), get dressed in front of strangers who now hate you, and pro­ceed to gate.

That would be stress­ful enough. But add to it gen­eral anx­i­ety about flight, lack of decent food, sleep, hydra­tion, and other phys­i­cal and emo­tional stresses asso­ci­ated with travel, and most people’s gen­eral mood at this point, in the secu­rity line, is one of unpleas­ant anticipation.

So I’m back at Logan, it’s early, and I just want to make sure I don’t miss my flight. I have pre­pared for all 13 steps the night before. My lotions, liq­uids and gels are appor­tioned and sealed. My shoes are untied, ready for instant slip-off. I’m try­ing not to make eye con­tact with any­one, assum­ing they all feel the same way -- grumpy and dis­tressed -- but it turns out they don’t.

I only know that because Mr. TSA him­self decided we needed a lit­tle refresher course. He approaches, walk­ing along­side us, lift­ing a num­ber of large bot­tles of ver­boten sham­poos and sun­tan lotion into the air. He is lit­er­ally yelling: “THIS IS WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO YOUR LIQUIDS. YOU MUST PUT ALL YOUR LIQUIDS INTO A SMALL PLASTIC BAG.” He is five feet away from my face and yelling directly into it. The cor­ri­dor is about 20 feet wide; I think he could use his indoor voice and com­mu­ni­cate more effec­tively. But he con­tin­ues down the line, hit­ting all 13 items on our to-do lists at full volume.

Finally, hav­ing reached the last pas­sen­ger, he shuts up, turns around, and starts head­ing back to his post. And that’s when the hor­rif­i­cally mag­i­cal moment hap­pened: Someone said “thank you.” Thank you! This ver­bally abu­sive author­ity fig­ure has, in my eyes, been noth­ing but rude, obnox­ious, and insult­ing, lec­tur­ing us about things that we should already know. But some­one thanked him for what I inter­preted as abuse. And then another per­son thanked him. And another. And soon, once about ten peo­ple had said “thank you,” he felt oblig­ated to respond with “you’re welcome.”

Did this peo­ple think he was doing them a favor? Did they think he was a hero? Have TSA agents been ele­vated to the myth­i­cal level of fire­fight­ers and first respon­ders? “You can do no wrong. You are keep­ing our coun­try safe. Thank you for everything.”

It was fas­ci­nat­ing to me that any­one would respond this way, and that after the first “thank you,” that oth­ers fol­lowed. What does that say about the crowd’s dynamic relat­ing to this author­ity fig­ure? How can the col­lec­tive emo­tion be so dif­fer­ent from my own? And how can this sort of inter­ac­tion inform our approach to emo­tional designs?

As you can see, peo­ple seemed to have a good time at the ASCII art show on Saturday. I had a blast, and was really pleased with how my ASCII Photo Booth turned out.

The “booth” was weeks in devel­op­ment, and often took pri­or­ity over my reg­u­lar school work. But I learned a ton about Processing, worked with live video for the first time, and also fig­ured out how to gen­er­ate and print PDFs. Also, although I was half-expecting the appli­ca­tion to crash at some point, it never did. What more could I have asked for?

Here’s what it looked like dur­ing installation:

It was fun watch­ing peo­ple use it for the first time, and I got some usability-related insights that will help me improve future instal­la­tions. But most peo­ple under­stood it right away. You sit down in the chair and see your image trans­lated into ASCII text on the screen. Click the mouse, watch the count­down -- 3… 2… 1… Smile! -- the screen flick­ers for a moment, and a sec­ond later your image emerges on paper from a laser printer. Cool!

Update: Just posted this video of the photo booth in action:

One thing I observed is that the best images were cre­ated by the peo­ple who didn’t rush and took some time to exper­i­ment with the sys­tem. They would lean in closer to the cam­era, then far­ther back, watch­ing the on-screen text regen­er­ate in response to their motion. The final images were sharpest when the sub­jects sat com­pletely still before and dur­ing the expo­sure. That felt appro­pri­ate, given that ASCII is old tech­nol­ogy, orig­i­nat­ing from a time when com­put­ers were much, much slower and unable to process images at all. As with early pho­tog­ra­phy, a clear image in ASCII takes time to develop.

I was happy to see peo­ple walk away with a phys­i­cal arti­fact of the expe­ri­ence, in this case a photo of them­selves or of a friend. I hope that one or two of those dynam­i­cally gen­er­ated, orig­i­nal art­works will end up on a refrig­er­a­tor some­where. (If you had your pic­ture taken, leave a com­ment below and tell me about your experience.)

More pic­tures from the evening below. The gallery sign (excel­lently designed by Colin, who curated the show):

JK’s ASCII video wall:

The choice between the two Democratic pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates is clear, at least if we’re decid­ing based on their web­site and col­lat­eral mate­r­ial designs. Finally, the peo­ple we really want to hear from are com­ment­ing on the Obama cam­paign’s use of Gotham. First, an analy­sis by Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones, the design­ers of the type­face. And sec­ond, a response from Gary Hustwit, direc­tor of Helvetica, includ­ing a brief inter­view with H&FJ about Gotham’s ori­gins. (Note to Hillary: Have your design team adjust your kem­ing.)

Update: I just checked hillaryclinton.com. Is it me, or are they using Gotham all over the place now, too?

Project: Pick a poten­tial the­sis issue you want to explore and respond to it.

Theory: I’m very inter­ested in how the vir­tual and the phys­i­cal realms trig­ger affect each other and effect changes or events in each other via ongo­ing feed­back mech­a­nisms. It bog­gles my mind to think about how many (phys­i­cal) actions we take in the real world as a result of (vir­tual) infor­ma­tion fed to us through net­works, where data exist as light and are lit­er­ally weight­less. How do flashes of light become man­i­fested in the phys­i­cal, expe­ri­en­tial world?

My the­ory is that the user is the point of inter­sec­tion (and inter­ac­tion) between the phys­i­cal and vir­tual realms, between objects and infor­ma­tion. The Earth enacts grav­ity and other phys­i­cal effects. Computing sys­tems enact data trans­fer and pro­cess­ing. But only sen­tient beings can find mean­ing in both, because they can under­stand what grav­ity means and under­stand what data trans­fer is by extrap­o­lat­ing out­wards, tak­ing what they grasp about these physical/virtual sys­tems and apply­ing them to hypo­thet­i­cal sce­nar­ios. I can imag­ine what would hap­pen if I threw a glass vase up in the air: It would fall back down, hit the ground, and prob­a­bly break into pieces. I’ve never thrown a vase before, but I can model and pre­dict that out­come with near-certainty because I have inferred the rules that gov­ern the system.

So, as a user/sentient being, my job is to intepret inputs, deduce the rules of the sys­tem (that would pro­duce those inputs), decide on a course of action, and then phys­i­cally man­i­fest that action. In the case of a dig­i­tal sys­tem, my phys­i­cal out­put (throw­ing a vase, press­ing a key, click­ing the mouse) is input for the vir­tual sys­tem, which responds accord­ing to its own rules, and on and on the feed­back loop goes.

I don’t think this project was extremely suc­cess­ful at address­ing those ideas, but it’s inter­est­ing nonethe­less. Try it out, and see if you can (1) deduce its rules and then (2) use them toward your own ends. Post a com­ment below with your findings.

Credits: Word list cour­tesy of mieliestronk.com.

Launch project >