{"id":122,"date":"2011-05-25T04:50:00","date_gmt":"2011-05-25T04:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pim.famnit.upr.si\/wp\/?p=122"},"modified":"2021-11-17T11:21:34","modified_gmt":"2021-11-17T11:21:34","slug":"placebo-interfaces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pim.famnit.upr.si\/wp\/?p=122","title":{"rendered":"Placebo interfaces"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Placebo<\/strong> is long known to have been used as drugs. But it is also known that it <strong>has effect in<\/strong> <strong>user interfaces!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I remembered <a href=\"http:\/\/idle.slashdot.org\/story\/10\/11\/08\/1521226\/The-Placebo-Effect-Not-Just-On-Drugs%20\">about this slash.dot article<\/a> when a friend told how he felt warm in the office and he was able to work in a T-shirt, untill he received an email about faulty heating system. Them he begun to feel cold :). So as long as he thought that the heating is working, he felt warm. It&#8217;s all about the illusion of believing or controlling something. <\/p>\n<p>The mentioned article lists some more examples:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In most elevators installed since the early 1990s, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.futilitycloset.com\/2010\/11\/04\/placebo-buttons\/\">the &#8216;close door&#8217; button has no effect<\/a>. But we keep pressing them, because it makes us feel better :). The thing is that elevator&#8217;s have this service mode or fire mode state in which the close button works, but most people do not know this.<\/li>\n<li><em> <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB1042577628591401304.html\">Many office thermostats are dummies<\/a>, designed to give workers the illusion of control. I HAVE ONE IN THE OFFICE AS WELL &#8211; and it&#8217;s a dummy one :(.<\/li>\n<li>More than 2,500 of the 3,250 &quot;walk&quot; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2004\/02\/27\/nyregion\/27BUTT.html\">buttons in New York intersections do nothing<\/a>. Everything is controlled by computers. I&#8217;d say that here in Lancaster is the same. Even if I don&#8217;t press the button the green light comes up at (to me) random times.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>The problem is that some lights do switch the green &quot;walk&quot; light on when<br \/>\n pressed and in some elevators the &quot;close&quot; button works<\/strong>. So how do we know<br \/>\nwhen to press them and when don&#8217;t? The best advice is to <strong>always press them<\/strong>. And if they don&#8217;t work immediately, press them few more times. The desired effect will come sooner or later :). And we&#8217;ll have a sense of control, which is good.<\/p>\n<p>This brings up another human behavior. <strong>Most of people press the &quot;walk&quot; button on a street light, even if it was already pressed by someone before us<\/strong>. It&#8217;s the same with &quot;call&quot; the elevator buttons. If there are three people waiting in front of it, probably all three of them pressed the button. It&#8217;s like the elevator counts how many people are waiting :). And when elevator has two &quot;call&quot; buttons (with the up and down arrows, so it knows where we want to go and it uses the optimal time algorithm for everyone), most of people I know press both of them &#8211; just to be sure :)!<\/p>\n<p>But who cares <a href=\"\/blog\/index.php?\/archives\/82-Operating-sliding-door.html\">as long as the toilet door on the train closes when we press the button<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Off topic.<strong> Did you notice that most elevators have mirrors in and some also at every door. It all a out physiology, because if we look at something interesting (in this example we observe ourself), the time passes quicker!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Placebo is long known to have been used as drugs. But it is also known that it has effect in user interfaces! I remembered about this slash.dot article when a friend told how he felt warm in the office and he was able to work in a T-shirt, untill he received an email about faulty&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pim.famnit.upr.si\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pim.famnit.upr.si\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pim.famnit.upr.si\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pim.famnit.upr.si\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pim.famnit.upr.si\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=122"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pim.famnit.upr.si\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":807,"href":"https:\/\/pim.famnit.upr.si\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions\/807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pim.famnit.upr.si\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pim.famnit.upr.si\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pim.famnit.upr.si\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}