Moral Hazard of Game Play or Why Foursquare is Broken
The danger of adding game dynamics to sites is that it changes the motivators for doing an action. By it’s very nature, the incentives make you more likely to do the behavior the designers are targeting. The designers think… This is great! More people are interacting with our thing we built. Fantastic! We won teh...
Games IRL: Supermarket Stars
I have this fantasy about what a good grocery shopper that I am. As I’m wheeling through the produce section, smugly checking items of my list, cabbage, celery, kale, oranges for juicing… check, check, check, I imagine that there’s a roving TV camera crew that will seize upon me and declare my cart the healthiest...
@sxswCrush: a behavioral experiment
It’s time to dust off last year’s project, SxSW Crush, and get ready for this year’s geek spring break better known as SXSWi 2011. For those not familiar, this little project lets you anonymously declare your romantic or platonic crushes via the twitter account @sxswCrush. Plans for new and improved-ness include. 1. Show list of...
Motion Capture Game Idea
What do you do with ideas that aren’t really in your area of expertise? I’m going to blog it and see what happens. The idea is pretty simple, a motion capture game that projects a dot onto the wall. You throw a dodgeball at it. The camera records and scores accuracy. As you increase in...
Pay What You Will
The past three weeks I’ve been playing some variation on letting people pay whatever they want to. The first week I told customers they could pay me however much they thought it was worth. I removed the tip jar and put a question mark on the menu board in the place of the price. Many...
PieLabPDX link round up
The media has been good to me. Here’s a round-up of the love fest: The Face of Media podcast by Bret Bernhoft The Willamette Week’s PieLab, More Than Meets the Pie by Ruth Brown *note they should be running a pie feature with a photo of my custardy-delicious Buttermilk Whiskey Pie this week. Food Carts...
Pie It Forward
I’ve been a busy bee serving smiling customers at PieLabPDX. Since my last post three weeks ago I’ve been up to some mischief both new and old. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the story, that’s the original idea that inspired the cart. In this experiment, customers get the order of the person...
Spin the wheel! Win a prize!
The beautiful wheel of fortune was installed on the cart two weeks ago and I’ve been putting it to use ever since. It has a chalkboard finish, so I can change the options and relative probability of each. There are approximately fifty spaces with one special half size space. Its pegs are painted red and...
First Day of PieLabPDX!
Friday was my first day! Exclamation point! Exclamation point! Finally I was able to legally stand on the corner with my little red and pink pie stand.The first game was Rock Paper Scissors. If we roshambo and I win, I get to pick what flavor pie you get. If you win, you choose. The first...
PieLabPDX debuts at 30 Hour Day
Sorry for the absence of postings lately, but I’ve been busy building things… physical things with molecules and stuff and not just pushing ones and zeroes around. The thing in question: a pie cart. When I tell people I’m building a pie cart I get a blank stare. They blink a few times and then...
This is not PieLab
—–UPDATE—– After a lovely conversation with John of Project M, the founder of PieLab in Greensboro, AL, he generously offered to let me keep using the name. I’m very grateful to have his support. —————– Help. I have received a couple of angry messages since starting my Kickstarter Project about my name being the same...
OkCupid is the best site on the interweb
If I haven’t already gone swoony-eyed over the dating site, okcupid.com in front of you, just give me time. I love them not only because I meet my Mr. Smoochy there, but because they do in such a damn geeky smart way. The latest: MyBestFace. It lets you upload several pictures of yourself and be...
