Screencast of Thinkmeter

DemoGirl made an unsolicited screencast of Thinkmeter in action:



I'd rather listen to her than me anyway. Thanks DemoGirl!

How To Choose a Domain Name (Flowchart)

Choosing a domain name is hard.  Luckily, there are tools that can help.  Having recently chosen a few domain names, we've learned a little (mostly, how frustrating it is).  Without further ado, a flowchart to guide the process:

 Here are the links:

• namethis.com
• domainpigeon.com
• ajaxwhois.com
• bustaname.com
• domaintyper.com
• domai.nr
• dotomator.com
• nameboy.com
  

Good luck! It's a big decision :)

Zombies or Helpers?

"We have limited foresight into the future. Most of us lack the ability-- and the desire-- to make sophisticated cost-benefit calculations.. And we often let emotion affect our judgement. Yet despite all these limitations, when our imperfect judgments are aggregated in the right way, our collective intelligence is often excellent."

-James Surowiecki, Wisdom of Crowds

"None of us is as dumb as all of us."
-despair.com

So which is it? Smart or dumb? Actually, Surowiecki describes both. On the one hand, a crowd at a county fair most accurately estimates the weight of a cow, and a stock market on who's going to be president is better than the experts. On the other hand, a group of people judging whether the space shuttle should take off make a tragic mistake.

Surowiecki claims one difference is how independent the members of the crowd are. If people follow each other instead of contributing their own independent thoughts, they form an information cascade which can wash away good judgement.

And yet when people are making decisions, they often want to know what others think. Ideally, then, there are two separate pieces to the system: crowd members who stay independent, and an "aggregator" (possibly a decision-maker) who puts together the information into a result.

No zombies were harmed in the making of this blog post. Seriously, don't worry, those people are not really zombies. Photo by ioerror.

Toothpaste & Communism

Today, we have a guest post from Melissa.

In the early 1990s, a few years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, I lived in Budapest, Hungary, a recently Communist place which that was letting go of its collectivist ways. Some trappings remained. Few people owned property or cars, Hungarians were never on time, and product choices were few. When you went to the store to buy toothpaste (fogkrém), there was one brand, and that's what you bought. It seemed like a drag at the time, but wasn't important enough to complain about.

Things are different in the US in late 2009. On the toothpaste front, the number of choices is overwhelming to the point of mental paralysis. Go to the average big box store. You don't have to understand combinatorics to know that the numerous axes of choice produce a dizzying array. First you've got the brand: Colgate, Crest, Aim, and more. Then you've got paste vs. gel, whitening vs. not, tartar control vs. not, mouthwash/breath additives vs. not, spearmint vs. peppermint. Though not all possible combinations are represented, there are well over 50. This is just among the mainstream toothpastes. They don't easily differentiate by price, so I don't have that to go on. I've gone to Target with the goal of buying toothpaste, and, faced with more choices than I could handle at the end of a long workday, I've left without. This is madness. Choosing toothpaste should not be so hard.

To cut down on choices, I enlisted the aid of my dental hygienist. "Should I be getting all that tartar control, whitening & breath freshening?" In a word, no. According to Marcia, the whitening doesn't really work, breath freshener is a waste, and the tartar control is bad for your enamel if you don't have a tartar problem. So now I'm down to brand. If I go with the plain jane toothpaste, I still need a little help with 3 brands times 2 formats (gel vs. paste), but six is manageable. Especially if my friends can tell me what they like in some organized fashion. Without communists around to tell you what to do, friends are a good second choice.


Got a favorite toothpaste? Vote here.

Quiet People Have Opinions Too

http://comics.com/pearls_before_swine/2009-11-24/

Groups can make great decisions together, but it's hard to ensure that everyone participates.  Quiet people may not contribute as much, and you miss their unique perspective or expertise.  The most assertive group members drive the dialog; their opinions have the most influence.

We believe Thinkmeter can help. Thinkmeter leads groups to better decisions by ensuring that everyone's opinion is counted.  Thinkmeter is an easy way to set up a decision and quickly see which options are the winners and the losers.  This can help to focus discussions: you can quickly eliminate the poorly rated options, and help make participants feel they've had a voice.

And, just to be clear:

Thinkmeter helps you make better decisions.
Thinkmeter helps you make better decisions.
Thinkmeter helps you make better decisions.

Making choices is tiring

Imagine, for a moment, that you are facing a very difficult decision about which of two job offers to accept. One position offers good pay and job security, but is pretty mundane, whereas the other job is really interesting and offers reasonable pay, but has questionable job security. Clearly you can go about resolving this dilemma in many ways. Few people, however, would say that your decision should be affected or influenced by whether or not you resisted the urge to eat cookies prior to contemplating the job offers. A decade of psychology research suggests otherwise. Unrelated activities that tax the executive function have important lingering effects, and may disrupt your ability to make such an important decision. In other words, you might choose the wrong job because you didn't eat a cookie. [bolding mine]

This hypothetical story starts an article in Scientific American that says making choices is tiring. The theory is that you have limited resources for executive function (for example, making a hard decision) and self-regulation (self-discipline, like not eating a cookie). A study by Kathleen Vohs et al. claims "choosing is more depleting than merely deliberating and forming preferences about options and more depleting than implementing choices made by someone else."

Maybe that's why people like to talk about choices instead of making a choice.

Choosing a Domain Name for Thinkmeter

Photo by ardenswayoflife

http://www.allthegoodnamesaretakenincludingthisone.com

Naming is hard. You'd like a name to be short, expressive, fun, memorable. If it's naming a business, you'd like it to be trademarkable. If it's choosing a domain name (the website address that goes in the browser address box), then serious pain ensues. The first 100 names you think of are already taken. ("allthegoodnamesaretaken.com" is taken!) 90 of the next 100 are, too. Do you want to go cu.te with d.ot placeme.nt? Even if you find some you like, your domain name isn't just for you, it's for others, too. You're unlikely to forget your own website name. "Memorable" means OTHER people can remember it.

So how did we choose Thinkmeter.com? Actually, it chose itself! Here's how. We sat down in front of computers independently but in the same room, and brainstormed names. We checked names (by submitting WHOIS queries, because we're geeks), and recorded the ones that weren't taken yet in a Google spreadsheet. All brainstorming rules apply: don't judge, write down everything, nothing but happiness, go for quantity. Every 10-15 minutes we'd talk about what sorts of names we were coming up with. A color theme, analogies for decision-making, a name that stood out. This would serve to "recombine" our individual efforts and keep the independent brainstorming going. After we had 80 names and were slowing down, we rated them in the spreadsheet, and picked out the top 5. Then we each added a couple of 'wildcard' picks that one of us liked but the other didn't. (There are two of us, Max and Dan.)

We ended up with a list of 9 names, most of which we'd be happy with (with the exception of the wildcards, which we hoped would be unmercifully banished). Then, we created a Thinkmeter poll (only it wasn't called Thinkmeter then, it was hosted somewhere else) and sent it to 8 other people with a variety of backgrounds: men and women, geeks and marketers. They voted, and lo and behold we got what we hoped: strong signals about what appealed and what didn't. That is, what appealed to OTHERS, we already knew about ourselves. We were happy with the one on top (Thinkmeter), and triumphantly declared the winner with the sound of trumpets ringing!

So why was Thinkmeter so useful in choosing its name?

1. We had a few specific options in mind. We narrowed our choices down to 9 names.

2. We cared what other people think. If you can confidently decide yourself, you don't need feedback. Should I get up now? Either hoist yourself out of bed, or roll over. However, in this case we believed that our website domain name should have some base level of broad appeal. In fact, when we tell new people the name, they respond positively surprisingly often, saying things like "I didn't think there were any good names left."

3. Responding was easy and fun. Responding took a few minutes at most. People like rating, and like offering their opinions. The way the system works now, after you've rated, it takes you directly to the screen where you see what everyone else thought, which people find interesting.

4. The feedback was pre-digested. As the deciders, we wanted a quick read. Good options float to the top, bad ones sink to the bottom. Per-option comments are gathered in the same place, so we can note patterns. For Thinkmeter, responders said, "best" "like it" "Still like it" "It's catchy". For unmist.com, they said, "I imagine an old woman with a cat and an overstuffed room" "university of mexico-ist?" and "Alright, who is this fog and mist person. Fess up." With those comments grouped, it is easier to note the subtle difference in tone. :)

5. The feedback separated out into winners and losers. Fortunately, numerous options dropped below 3 immediately, while only two tied for top place at 3.8. (Actually, we tie-break by variance, so Thinkmeter was the choice with more agreement.) This is not decision by committee. We made the poll, chose the options, and made the final call. However, the more obvious the results are, the easier it is to use the feedback.

6. It was semi-private. We didn't want to put a poll of domain names in public where domain name squatters would snap them up, however unlikely that may be.

Below is a summary of responses. Some are pretty hilarious. We will keep silent on which picks were wildcards, so guess away. Dan confesses he was the "mist and fog person." The primary appeal was that those names were short. Apparently there are other things to consider, too.

We believe there are numerous situations where quick feedback from a small group of people can help make good decisions. Choosing a book for a book club, naming, choosing a day to meet, or a restaurant at which to meet. Give it a try and let us know what you think!

--Dan and Max