You might have noticed that I'm continuing my quest for interesting blog content.This time out, I found a post about intelligent carpets on Eric Braden's blog. A company, Engadget, has a product which can determine age, weight and gender based on how people walk on it. A concern posted by Mr. Braden is privacy, something regular readers will recognize as an important topic to me. NextStage has its own privacy and principles. We not only go by them ourselves, we monitor our partners and clients to make sure no abuses are taking place there, as well. Strangely enough, our principles also bring us clients and employees.
One of the things I find fascinating about Engadget's Intelligent Carpet is that it is subtle, proactive, and doesn't require the individual to do anything they wouldn't normally do. This impresses me because it's very much how NextStage's Evolution TechnologyTM works. Like Engadget's magic carpet, NextStage's Evolution TechnologyTM doesn't interfere with people behaving as they normally would. Part of NextStage's philosophy is that any information gathered when the subjects know information is being gathered is tainted, period. It takes incredibly skilled people to develop and implement information gathering methods which sufficiently blind the subjects to what's really being investigated.
The best method I found and the one NextStage makes great use of is the Chinese General Solicitation. In Reading Virtual Minds Chapter 5, "How to Use This Book", I explain that the Chinese General Solicitation is based on an old story in which the Emperor called all his generals together and said that the country was going to be invaded. Each of them was to explain to the Emperor why they were the best one to lead the troops into battle. The Emperor listened to each general separately and let them say any and every thing they wished. When they were through extolling their own virtues, the Emperor asked, "But if something happens to you, who would then lead my armies?" The individual whom the majority of the generals thought was second only to them was the one chosen by the Emperor to lead his armies. Some great examples of the flaws the Chinese General Solicitation bypasses are in the May '95 Discover Magazine article, Poll Vaulting.
Let me share a real world example of the Chinese General Solicitation that I often use in our trainings. See if you can figure out what we were really testing.
We went to a suburban mall and invited people to sit down and try some spaghetti in red sauce. They were given small paper bowls of commercially available spaghetti in a commercially available red sauce and had to select plastic utensils -- knife, fork, spoon -- from some bins, along with napkins and drinks (two branded colas, two branded non-colas). They could go back through as many times as they wished. They were given US$5 for their trouble. Participants were told we were testing the sauce; would it be successful in that geographic market?
Can you guess what we were really testing?
I'll post the answer in my next entry. Leave me a comment or send me an email if you think you know the answer.
» The Answer Is "What's the Optimal Length of Spaghetti?" from BizMediaScience
The Answer Deals with Spaghetti [Read More]
Tracked on: December 9, 2006 3:28 PM | Permalink to Trackback