I’ll admit it: the usability geek in me is smitten with the coolest doodad of the political season, CNN’s live dial-testing of a focus group during the debates. There it is in real-time — the collective response of a group of undecided and presumably impressionable voters — swinging up and down with the pitch and inflection of the arguments being made by our would-be leaders on-screen. Powerful stuff. And terrible, too.
Powerful — and meaningful — if you’re a student of debates, or a political flack who wants nothing more than to slice and dice every mood-altering phrase, every cringe-induced twitch of the dial. Dial-testing gives you access to immediate, emotional, visceral feedback, without any of those messy social and psychological filters.
Terrible — awful, even — if you’re an undecided voter who’s watching the debates at home and trying to come to your own conclusions. Those wandering lines on the screen tend to suggest not only what other folks may be thinking, but what you should be thinking, too, even if you have nothing in common with the folks cranking the meters in their hands.
It’s not a question of whether voters should have access to every bit of information possible to make their decisions, but of whether the information they use to make those decisions is reliable and free from bias… especially from bias that they have no way to discern.
By way of example, this video captures CNN’s dial-testers scoring Joe Biden off the charts during a surprisingly emotional moment of the Vice Presidential debate. It’s hard not to be moved by the double whammy of Joe Biden getting a bit choked up, and the metered results of folks’ reactions to it.
Do you agree with the folks who’s feedback is measured in this example? Doesn’t matter… you’re likely to be influenced by it, regardless. Which is… problematic, at best.
There are millions who wouldn’t think of coffee without abundant cream and sugar. (Hello, New England!) And there are a precious, precocious few who would consider condiments of *any* sort anathema to the coffee experience. For them, the NYTimes offers this point of view:
Coffee purists would never, ever add dairy to their coffee, and they [...]
Congratulations to Stephen Morrissey, who’s taken top honors at the WBC in Copenhagen!
The news is all kinds of awesome… couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. ‘Course, it’s nothing but great news, too, for Square Mile Coffee, the much anticipated partnership between Stephen and the 2007 WBC winner, James Hoffman. Honestly, I’m going to have [...]
After 240 years of absolute monarchy, Nepal has ousted its royal autocrat and declared itself a republic, thus condemning themselves to an altogether new sort of political strife: shifty-eyed scoundrels who’ve been elected to their highest office, rather than merely inheriting it.
Good on them.
Some words of advice as the Nepali people draw up a new [...]
It’s odd to feel so self-conscious about flying the flag on a national holiday; to feel conflicted about being genuinely proud — honestly grateful — to be an American, and at the same time saddened and angry about what’s been done in our country’s name. I’m not certain… does that make me a true patriot, [...]
On weekends like this, it’s a good opportunity to take stock, and enjoy life’s simpler pleasures: good company, glorious weather, and a little bit of Kansas City style barbecue. Yeah… in Vermont.
As the old saw goes, if you want something done right, do it yourself. Thus, the Weber shrine… a paean to DIY, high on [...]
If you’re at all obsessive about who’s visiting your web site, what they’re looking at, and whether or not your visits are trending up or down or sideways, then my advice is don’t — don’t even *think* about — hooking up with the Woopra beta program.
Let me be more clear: Woopra is crack for [...]
Bloggle is the online playground of Doug Cadmus, a usability guy, author, photographer and sometime dramatist who moved to Vermont for the coffee. When not writing, reading or walking his neurotic golden retriever, he roasts coffee in his garage and is the Web Guy for Green Mountain Coffee in Waterbury, Vermont.