Friday, December 31, 2010

How do you get salesmen to measure their blood pressure?


For a recent consulting project I was asked to find a way to get medical equipment salesmen to use a particular blood pressure monitoring device.  The problem is, blood pressure monitoring is similar to measuring someone’s weight.  You can’t just run a contest like, “The Biggest Loser” because some people may already be at a low weight and it would not make sense for those people to lose any more weight.  Additionally, there may be particular reasons why it is hard for some people to lose weight or lower their blood pressure.


One solution is to create some incentive for people to use the actual device.  For blood pressure monitoring, people could take their blood pressure and then email the results.  Unfortunately, salespeople are somewhat comfortable providing information even when that information does exactly match actual recorded data.  To enforce integrity, the participants could be required to email a picture of the actual number that also shows some kind of date stamp such as the calendar from a cell phone.

Such methods start to get complicated and more time is spent collecting the data then understanding it.  A better solution is to use the Behavioral Science concept of Overconfidence Bias.  In this bias, people tend to believe that their skills or judgment is better then it actually is.  For example if you ask a room of 20 people if they think they are better than average drivers, more then half of the group will say yes.  Salesmen are particularly vulnerable to this bias.

Here is how the program would work.  Each salesman would be given a blood pressure monitor.  Instead of asking for periodic updates, a contest would be held at defined times.  At the time of the contest, each person would be asked to guess what his or her blood pressure is.  Then their pressure would be measured.  Points would be awarded based on how close the person guesses to their measured pressure.  Under this model, the participants would have an incentive to measure the pressure on their own and to remember that number.  They would also start to learn what impacts that pressure.  Does it go up after coffee?  Is it higher in the morning or in the afternoon?

By creating a competition based on the Overconfidence Bias, the salesmen would not only use the device on their own but they would also have a better understanding of what their own number is and what impacts that number.  Whether the participant chooses to take steps to reduce high blood pressure is up to them but knowledge of a problem is always the first step.

Monday, December 20, 2010

How much money do I need in retirement?

One of the biggest problems facing people planning for retirement is determining how inflation will impact monthly living expenses.  Most websites offer an online calculator to help you find the numbers.  For example, assume you currently spend $3,000 per month on food, clothing, hobbies and rent, and you plan to retire in 20 years.  Using an online calculator, in 20 years at 3.5% inflation, you will need $6,000 per month to maintain the same lifestyle.

The problem is, that these calculators don’t give you an intuitive sense of the time value of money.  What happens if you postpone your retirement by 5 years?  What happens if you retire in 20 years and your retirement lasts 35 years?  Each of these calculations would provide a new number, which you must record along with the scenario.  Behavior Science teaches us that people are better able to internalize data when it is displayed in a graphical form rather then a numeric form.  This is why analog watches are preferred over digital watches and why people prefer stock charts over spreadsheets to view stock performance.

Instead of offering an online calculator that gives an exact number, companies should use a graphical format that helps people visualize a range of numbers that more accurately represents the real world.

Here is how it would work.  First, find your current monthly expenses on the left side of the chart.  Then move your finger to the right the number of years until retirement.  The line that you cross tells you how much money you will need to sustain your current lifestyle assuming 3.5% inflation.  As you continue to move your finger to the right you will see how each year you need a little more money to compensate for inflation.


By using this graphical format, companies can give people a more intuitive feel for the amount of money the person will need for retirement.  In addition, the graph will make it easier to run different scenarios such as postponing retirement or the impact of a long lifetime.  This will help people better plan for retirement and understand that there are no exact answers for retirement planning so you need allow for deviation from your plan.

We will talk later about how much you need to save in order to withdraw the necessary money as detailed in this chart.

Sunday, December 5, 2010

A Desktop User Interface That Fitts

One of the problems with the Microsoft Windows user interface is the fact that the menu bar is attached to the top of the active window.  When you move your mouse to the the menu, there is the potential that you can overshoot the menu and must move your mouse back.  This increases the amount of time necessary to use the menu.


Apple addresses this issue by putting the menu bar at the top of the page.  This makes it impossible to overshoot the menu and speeds up activity.  Bruce Tognazzini wrote about this issue in an excellent article titled, “A Quiz Designed to Give You Fitts”.  In the article, Bruce writes about Fitts' Law that states, "The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target."  Anchoring the menu bar at the top of the screen creates an infinity large target which is in line with Fitts Law.  The problem is, that there is still a distance between the active window and the menu bar that must be crossed which slows users down.  Refer to the Dead Space in the picture below.


A better solution would be to use the same backstop that Apple uses but decrease the distance the mouse must travel to reach the menu bar.  A backstop should be placed at the top of the active window to prevent the mouse from moving beyond the the menu bar at the top of the window.  This would increase the effective area of the target while decreasing the distance traveled by the mouse.  If a user wanted to access another window, they could move the mouse to the left, right or bottom of the active window to escape.  A user could also use Alt Tab, a key combination that can be accessed by the left hand that usually does not access the mouse.




When the mouse hit the backstop, it would stop and only slide from left to right. If a user continued to push the mouse past the backstop, the pointer would eventually be released and could continue to move across the desktop.

By creating a local backstop at the top of the active window, Fitts law states that the time required to access a menu should be faster compared to both the Microsoft Windows and the Apple Macintosh interface.  This will increase the productivity of anyone who routinely accesses menus such as graphic designers and will also make life easier for people such as seniors who may have poor hand eye coordination.