This is a "How to Do It" book, complete with 69 TakeAways. From Holly Buchanan's Foreword:
After inhaling Reading Virtual Minds Volume I I was like an antsy 3-year old waiting for Reading Virtual Minds Volume II. It did not disappoint.
I love the way Joseph Carrabis thinks. He has a unique ability to share broad rich theory with actionable specifics. Unlike many technical writers, he has a unique voice that is both approachable and humorous. It makes for an enjoyable read.
But what's the main reason why you should read Reading Virtual Minds Volume II: Experiences and Expectations? Because where most companies and designers fail is on the expectation front.
Humans are designed as expectation engines.
This is, perhaps, the most important sentence in this book. One of the main points Joseph makes in this volume is this - Understand your audiences' whys and you'll design near perfect whats.
Design failures come from getting the whys wrong. That can lead to failures on the experience side, but also on the expectation side. And that can be the bigger problem.
Expectation is a top-down process. Higher-level information informs lower-level processing. Experience is a bottom-up process. Sensory information goes into higher-level processing for evaluation. Humans are designed as expectation engines. Topdown connections out number bottom-up connections by about 10:1.
Why is this so important?
In language, more than anywhere else, we see or hear what we expect to hear, not necessarily what is said or written. Across all cultures and languages, neurophysiologists and psychologists estimate that what we experience is as much as 85% what we expect to experience, not necessarily what is real or 'environmentally available'.
And
When people expect A and get B they go through a few moments of fugue. External reality is not synching up with internal reality and the mind and brain will, if allowed, burn themselves out making the two mesh. Get your consumer/visitor/user experience AND expectation right, get their why right, and you'll be exponentially more successful.
Here are just a few of the goodies you'll find in this book:
- Privacy vs. value exchange and when to ask for what information. Joseph has some actionable specifics on this that will surprise you.
- Why we design for false attractors rather than the real problem.
- The importance of understanding convincer strategies. Convincer strategies are the internal processes people go through in order to convince themselves they should or should not do something.
- Companies spend a lot of time trying to convince consumers to trust them. But what may be even more important is understanding how to let consumers you know you trust them.
- This book has ideas on how to show your customers/users/visitors, "I believe in you".
- How often our own experience influence our designs. Unless you're able to throw all your experience out, and let the user's experience in, get out of the usability and design business.
- How to allow your visitors easy Anonymous-Expressive Identity and make them yours forever.
- Regarding new material, design, interface, the importance of making sure your suggestions provide a clear path to the past (thus being risk averse while providing marketable innovation).
As always, Reading Virtual Minds provides specific actionable ideas. But it will also make you think and approach your work in a new way. And I think that's the best reason to treat yourself to this book and the inner workings of NextStage and Joseph Carrabis.
About the Author: Joseph Carrabis is Founder and Chief Research Officer of The NextStage Companies and helps clients understand how people think and react to marketing, leveraging that information to improve marketing efforts. He has been awarded patents for NextStage's Evolution Technology, creating a new, disruptive field of technology and applications. Evolution Technology allows any programmable device to understand human thought and respond accordingly. He has designed, developed and delivered over 100 tools that analyze everything from group and individual social behaviors to product design and development to community development and monitoring to consumer psychology to resume analysis and improvement to finding compatible life-partners to personal growth to training measurement for governments, businesses and individuals worldwide. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Southern California's Annenberg Center for the Digital Future; a Senior Research Fellow and Board Advisory Member for the Society for New Communications Research; a Founder, Senior Researcher and Director of Predictive Analytics for the Center for Adaptive Solutions; a member of Scientists Without Borders; has served as Chief Neuroscience Officer and currently advises the event industry about the neuroscience of events, conferences, conventions and trainings. Joseph has authored over 25 books, including "Reading Virtual Minds Volume I: Science and History" and "Tales 'Told Round Celestial Campfires".
