The Psychology Behind Why the iPad Didn’t Kill the Kindle

Amazon succeeds because their strategy catches the psychological fundamentals that drive consumer behavior, not short-term infatuation with bells and whistles. When the iPad came out, many sounded the death knell for the Kindle. You have to admit, the iPad was, and still is, pretty slick, and on first appearance, Kindle's future looked bleak. Nick Bilton's NY Times post "Third-Generation Kindle Is Top Seller" talks about how Amazon was able to stay in the game.  From my perspective, Amazon succeeds because they understand the psychological shift taking place in our technology-rich environment. It's not about the tools, it's about what we want to do with the tools. Amazon understands that, ultimately, it's about user experience and meaning. As I wrote in a recent post (15 Techno-Cultural Trends for 2011), we will increasingly see a shift in focus from the thrill of owning cool technology to the goals of using it. Amazon is positioning itself to catch the … [Read more...]

The Big Switch: Trading in my BlackBerry for a Droid

BlackBerry vs Droid

So it comes to this: I am part of the first new revolution. Technology has changed our fundamental expectations about how things should work. One of those things is access to information. We want information on-demand. More importantly, we want the information we need on demand. Most of don’t even realize our expectations have shifted. (And worse, most companies don’t either.) I have been a loyal BlackBerry user for a number of years. Right now I have the BlackBerry Tour. But after last night, I’m switching to a Droid. (I use Verizon, so iPhone isn’t an option here.) This new commitment to change happened because I got lost. At night.  In the rain.  Like a good social media observer, I was on my way to a Meetup event in a town where I don’t know my way around. Sure, I had the full complement of electronics in my car: Garmin, Blackberry, laptop, and iPad. Garmin didn’t help because I didn’t have the right address and in a moment of over-confidence, I … [Read more...]

Vote with Your Eyeballs for Positive Media Content

Prosocial Augmented Reality: Celebrating Youth Achievement Where you look matters.  Media producers count eyeballs and show you what you will watch.  Let’s celebrate achievement, such as the fifth grade chorus from Staten Island, instead of spending our time and money consuming media about outliers, like LeBron James’ basketball contract, or irresponsibility and bad behavior, like Lindsay Lohan’s substance problems and jail sentence. It's time we started exercising our power through viewing choice and putting the powers of emerging media technologies to work promoting the behaviors we want to see in the media for our kids to emulate--not those we can't help but see or wish we hadn't. Let's use the excitement and engagement of emerging technologies—such as augmented reality—for prosocial ends. We are long overdue to take some responsibility for the media content we choose to support. Let your eyeballs, remotes and wallets do the talking instead of your … [Read more...]

How Media Psychology Contributes to Ergonomics

I received the following thoughtful question: Human factors are investigated under the scientific discipline called Ergonomics for comprehending human cognition, or the brain system, in order to design information systems within human factor limitations.  How are ergonomics and media psychology related? Human physiology and cognition are obviously central issues to ergonomics and they take into account human development across the lifespan from that perspective. Media psychology also looks at the experiential aspects of human interaction with objects and environments across the lifespan. It extends the usability to the perceptions of self and self-reflection, such as, identity, self-efficacy (competence), engagement and flow (in contrast to attention), persuasion, qualitative perceptions of aesthetics, and attribution or the meaning we give to our interactions.  For example: Did this experience make me feel competent or incompetent? Did I feel able to make a good … [Read more...]