By Rodrigo de Benito Sanz (February 1, 2009) (Question 2,Reading 1)

I found all the texts very interesting from a point of view of the importance of little things. Micro – expressions, persuasive mechanisms and small resignifications can have big impact on people’s (or companies’) behavior.

The creation of an automatic lie detector is almost impossible (for the reasons the readings describe) . However, I do think of micro expressions as very important data to determine subyacent information. Last year, I participated in a discussion about wether or not a computational camera could detect “good” or “bad” people. I still think what I said then: even if physionomy sounds like a very speculative field, little expressions are there and even remain afterwards (in the form of wrinkles for example).

Concerning the reading about design with intent, I have to admit that I’ve always thought of persuasive as something that still gives the option to do something else. What I find very interesting in the text is the description of different mechanisms integrated with a specific purpose and playing a main role in the functionality of the whole application (I’m thinking now in the “step by step” character of Amazon’s checking out process).

I would like to remark as well the interest of the Pepsi case: Persuasion means in several situations resignification. This can begin with small details and generate whole new meanings, that will overlap and finally substitute the original ones. This is an important idea to keep in mind when using technology to influence on behaviors.

What technology and techniques were employed to expose the persuasion attempt? How did the persuasion attempt try to disguise its intention, or appeal to you?

Two days ago, a very old Facebook application catched my attention. It was the IQ app that gives you a test to find out you IQ. I say old, because I remembered I did that once, and afterwards I got no results because I didn’t want to register. The new app has a renovated an attractive interface (probably targetted to teenager audiences) but the functionality is mostly the same. It appeals to competition by referring to the average IQ and also to some “celebrities” results. After a series of silly questions the app asks the user to enter a phone number and I’m pretty sure some more information (I don’t know this since I didn’t go ahead). Probably they suceed in getting personal data, making use of the excitement generated by the IQ test. However, they should be more subtle maybe dividing the requests for personal info among different sections or offering some else in return than just lame results.