Check out this video. Don’t want to give anything away. It’s got quite a visceral punch. (via one of Chip’s students at Stanford)
Archive for the 'Simplicity' Category
“Choice” video
Published by March 11th, 2008 in General, Simplicity, Unexpectedness, Concreteness and Emotion. 11 Comments“Canoe Man”
Published by December 20th, 2007 in General, Simplicity, Concreteness, Credibility, Emotion and Story. 0 CommentsThere are 6 principles of sticky ideas, and folks, Canoe Man has all 6. It’s no wonder why this bizarro tale has captivated the UK public.
Robert M brought it to our attention with this introduction: “Man vanishes at sea in 2002, only his battered kayak is found. Wife and two sons mourn, then wife claims life […]
Triggers and water conservation
Published by December 20th, 2007 in General, Simplicity, Unexpectedness and Concreteness. 0 CommentsPark Howell saw our column about “Triggers” in Fast Company and wrote us with a great story:
In 1999, we created the “Water - Use it Wisely” conservation campaign that was completely built on environmental triggers. I think we were simply more intuitive (lucky) in our approach than brilliant (good) when creating the campaign, but it […]
Tammy Is a Quitter
Published by October 23rd, 2007 in General, Simplicity, Concreteness, Credibility, Story, Curse of Knowledge and Teachers. 3 CommentsHere’s a story from Dave Rendall, who has a blog called the Freak Factor. (I love his post that argues that if you’re getting rejected, you’re doing something right.)
I hadn’t seen Tammy in almost a year, when she approached me in the hallway. I was there to teach an evening class for non-traditional students. She told me […]
Digital signal processing, made to stick
Published by October 17th, 2007 in General, Simplicity, Concreteness, Story, Curse of Knowledge and Teachers. 4 Comments[Preamble] If you ask someone to think of a sticky idea, a lot of times they’ll blurt out a slogan. ”Wassssup!” ”Just do it.” And, no question, these are sticky ideas. But because people tend to associate the notion of “stickiness” with things like slogans — i.e., short, punchy, cleverisms — they have a hard time imagining […]
Tanzania post-mortem
Published by August 20th, 2007 in General, Simplicity, Unexpectedness, Concreteness, Credibility, Emotion and Story. 8 CommentsChip and I had an incredible time in Tanzania. So, let me start by saying this: You know that feeling you get when a full explanation would take 25,000 words, but you’ve only got 500, and you’re afraid to oversimplify, but you’re also afraid to give a vague “neat experience” summary, and this causes a […]
A C.J. Cragg moment
Published by July 31st, 2007 in General, Simplicity, Unexpectedness, Concreteness, Emotion and Curse of Knowledge. 0 CommentsCourtesy of Shawn Callahan, a sticky West Wing moment.
A tale of two bottled-water stories
Published by July 19th, 2007 in General, Simplicity, Unexpectedness, Concreteness, Credibility, Emotion and Story. 7 CommentsI previously blogged about Charles Fishman’s insightful and thoroughly sticky piece on the bottled water industry. His main point: Our embrace of bottled water “is not a benign indulgence.”
Then I got this note from Mojo Mom, who I’m a big fan of:
Today I heard NY Times reporter Julia Moskin interviewed [about bottled water] on NPR’s The Splendid Table and I […]
An ob/gyn on lectures that work
Published by July 13th, 2007 in General, Simplicity, Concreteness, Credibility and Teachers. 6 CommentsChip and I love this post by an ob/gyn, which is titled “Teaching medicine to residents and students.” Lots of concrete examples of good versus bad teaching techniques. In particular scroll down and read the author’s 4 different options for presenting the “differential diagnosis of amenorrhea” (from the “right way” to the “disaster”). Here’s a quote:
I refuse to […]
Charles Fishman on bottled water
Published by July 7th, 2007 in General, Simplicity, Unexpectedness, Concreteness and Credibility. 10 CommentsFishman, author of The Wal-Mart Effect, writes this month in Fast Company about our love of bottled water, which he says ”is not a benign indulgence.”
Check out this quote:
In San Francisco, the municipal water comes from inside Yosemite National Park. It’s so good the EPA doesn’t require San Francisco to filter it. If you bought and drank a […]
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