OUT OF THE BLUE

iAM4/4 .MIND

The Digital Revolution is all around us. The impact of digitization on established businesses, institutions, and start-ups is profound, and is opening up new dimensions to deliver products and services and to interact with customers.

However, perhaps even deeper than the industry changes are the underlying changes that digital is having on our personal and professional lives. In a positive feedback cycle, users foster the development of innovations and, at the same time, change behaviors and preferences upon using them. The expectation of technology to make our lives easier and faster is growing. As digital continues changing what we do, the question arises: is digital changing who we are?

Out of the Blue digs into these changes: new behaviors, new preferences, and new social mores that are emerging with such a strength and transformative power that we could be witnessing the dawn of a new concept of the self: the i.AM.

Knowing how individuals evolve in the digital revolution will be critical for business and institution. Out of the Blue’s purpose is to contribute to this knowledge.

Under the overarching theme iAM, we have developed four different concepts.

.me: How individualism and personalization take on new dimensions with digital.

.now: How digital is changing our perception of time and our use of resources

.here: How digital is broadening the concepts of place and presence

.mind: How digital is affecting our minds and our attention

The material is crowdsourced and linked for further reference and reading. We are only scratching the surface and invite you to join us on this journey. The chapters .me and .now have already been released.

– Oliver Wyman’s Communications, Media and Technlogy practice

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EDITORIAL

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“ Are our devices turning us into a new kind of human?”

– Amber Case, cyborg anthropologist, TED Radio

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iAM

Digital is an integral part of our lives. Technology is blurring the lines between the digital, physical and biological spheres while reshaping our perception of space and time and even the concept of our identity or persona.

The expectation of technology to make our lives easier and faster is growing. As digital continues changing what we do, the question arises: is digital changing who we are?

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.MINDHow digital is affecting our minds and our attention

iAM INDEX

.HEREHow digital is broadening the concepts of place and presence

Ogilvy & Mather China Center For Psychological Research, Shenyang Phone Wall Campaign. Used under permission

.MEHow individualism and personalization take on new dimensions with digital.

.NOWHow digital is changing our perception of time and our use of resources

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.MINDIn a world of technological abundance, attention is our scarcest resource.

We are struggling to put technology in its proper place. The digital information and functionality we love and crave behaviorally, socially, and cognitively is become more and more intrusive. It is starting to impact our relationships, our productivity, and our ability to concentrate and think deeply.

Are we getting it all wrong? Ultimately, technology has the power to help us become the people we want to be. It can help us meet our goals and help us set boundaries, and it is something we can control, rather than be controlled by it.

How digital is affecting our minds and our attention

Image: Ogilvy & Mather China Center For Psychological Research, Shenyang Phone Wall Campaign. Used under permission

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“ You watch people at dinner tables, where they’re both at their phones and talking to their dinner partners. Ask what’s happening there, and they explain to you what some call “the rule of three”: You wait for three people to have their heads up before you put your head down to your phone, so you make sure that some kind of conversation persists …

… [Mobile devices], I think unlike other similar technologies, make three promises. I call it “three gifts from a benevolent genie”: that you’ll never have to be alone, that your voice will always be heard, that you can put your attention wherever you want it to be. And that you can slip in and out of wherever you are to be wherever you want to be, with no social stigma. [These devices create] a new set of social mores that allow for a split attention in human relationships and human community.”

– Sherry Turkle, author of Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age

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In the UK, people are spending more time on media and communications than on sleeping.

The average UK adult uses communications and media services for 8 hours 45 minutes, and sleeps for 8 hours 18 minutes.

In the US, 89% of Americans check their smartphones at least a few times a day.

93% of 18 to 29-year-old US smartphone owners used their phone at least once to avoid being bored, and 47% did so to avoid interacting with the people around them.

80% of respondents had their phone out during their last social interaction with another person. 82% of the said that phone use adversely affected the conversation.

In Africa, more than half of Africa’s mobile users check their devices within five minutes of waking up and before going to bed.

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TECHNOLOGIES OF ESCAPE

According to American philosopher Matthew Crawford our increasing distractibility is the result of technological changes that, in turn, have their roots in our civilization’s spiritual commitments.

Western society’s obsession with autonomy has, in the last few hundred years, placed it at the center of our lives, economically, politically, and technologically.

But we have taken things too far: We are now addicted to liberation, and regard any situation – a movie, a conversation, a one-block walk down a city street – as a kind of attention prison. Distraction is a way of asserting control; it’s autonomy run amok. Technologies of escape, like the smartphone, tap into our habits of secession.

The ever-presence of smartphones and technology in our lives allow us to direct our attention wherever we want. Our devices promise constant entertainment and a never-ending stream of updates and information to tickle our curiosity, fight boredom, leverage downtime, and connect.

Our tendency to turn to our devices instead of each other, whether at work or with friends and family, has led MIT psychologist and sociologist Sherry Turkle to reclaim the value of face-to-face conversation for human connection and empathy, and the virtue of solitude for conversations with the self.

AN OMNIPRESENT MIND (1/2) FREEDOM OF CHOICE?

Sources: Ofcom, ComScore, Bank of America, Deloitte, PEW Research Center

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American author Nicholas Carr argues that the perpetual interruptions our devices impose on us – in combination with a primitive desire to know everything that´s going on around us – makes us pay attention not to what’s important, but simply what’s new.

Furthermore, endless access to new information easily overloads our working memory. When we reach cognitive overload, our ability to transfer information and things we’ve learned to long-term memory significantly deteriorates. In this way, technology is helping create an environment that constantly frustrates our minds’ ability to create new knowledge and think deeply.

AN OMNIPRESENT MIND (2/2) SHARP TOOLS, DULL MINDS AND DIGITAL AMNESIA

Sources: Kapersky Lab, YaleNews

INTERNET – OUR EXTERNAL HARDWARE

Numerous studies have demonstrated the variable efficacy of traditional versus digital methods of fact recollection for long-term memory production. While actively recalling previously-known information efficiently commits it to memory, passively finding such information on the internet does not.

The internet also makes us feel a smarter than we actually are: In nine different experiments with more than 1,000 participants, Yale University psychologists found that if subjects received information through internet searches, they rated their knowledge base as much greater than those who obtained the information through other methods. People who search for information thus tend to conflate accessible knowledge with their own personal knowledge.Sources: Kapersky Lab, YaleNews

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HABITS AND THE FEEL GOOD EFFECT

One of the most effective ways to create motivation and form a habit in people is to simply make them feel good; in neurological terms, this translates into causing dopamine to be released in the brain. Neuroscience research has revealed that our dopamine system works not to provide us with rewards for our efforts, but to keep us searching by inducing a semi-stressful response known as desire.

Dopamine surges when the brain is expecting a reward, and it is much more powerful if the expected reward is variable. Introducing variability multiplies the effect, creating a frenzied hunting state that activates the parts in the brain associated with wanting and desire. The classic examples include slot machines and lotteries; however, variable rewards are prevalent in habit-forming consumer technologies, too.

PERSUASIVE TECHNOLOGY 1/2 MANUFACTURING DESIRE AND CREATING HABITS

Whether we like it or not, online services and products are designed, either consciously or through trial-and-error, to be habit-forming and engaging. With insights drawn from psychology and behavioral economics – and using technologies that measure customer behaviour – consumer technology companies design products that are not merely persuasive, but indeed specifically aimed at forging new habits.

Habits are powerful since because they generate behavior performed with little or no conscious thought. These are things we do on a daily basis: Once a habit has been formed, our behavior becomes automatic and is triggered by simple situational and emotional cues. About 40 percent of what we do day in and day out is done purely out of habit.

Sources: MIT Technology Review, Robert Sapolsky, BJ Fogg, Nir Eyal

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PERSUASIVE TECHNOLOGY 2/2 HOW WE GET HOOKED (FOR GOOD AND FOR BAD)

Nir Eyal, a behavioral scientist who studies the intersection of psychology, technology, and business, argues that the future belongs to companies that can create habit-forming products. Using what Eyal calls the “Hook framework”, companies create users who have internalized the need for their products. “Hooks” can shape customer preferences and tastes and establish new habits that deepen their involvement with a company’s product.

Perhaps most importantly, once a habit is formed, it becomes iterative. Users are drawn back to the products again and again with little advertising or marketing. The difficulty then resides in designing productive habits that serve, rather than enslave, us.

Sources: Nir Eyal, BJ Fogg

THE HOOK FRAMEWORK BY NIR EYAL

A product’s “hook” exploits users’ psychology to convert their externally-motivated engagement with the product into one that is internally motivated and habitual. It consists of four consecutive parts:

Trigger: Something that cues a user to action, either an external trigger (e.g. a button with “buy this”) or an internal trigger associated with some routine or emotion (e.g. the boredom leading one to watch videos on YouTube).

Action: Something the user needs to do in anticipation of a reward. The easier it is to do, the more likely the user is to take action.

Reward: The reward the user gets for taking said action. Something that scratches an itch, but leaves one wanting more.

Investment: Something a user puts into the product in anticipation of a future benefit (e.g. uploaded photos, new status updates). This increases the likelihood of returned usage.

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CALM TECHNOLOGY RESTORING CHOICE AND PEACE OF MIND

Technology´s ability to “hijack our minds” may have greater- than-expected consequences for our personal and professional lives: Research has shown that external interruption leads to interruption. We are increasingly interrupting ourselves and our lines of thought or conversations, as we remove our attention away from what we are currently doing, or whom we are with, and put it elsewhere.

In 1995, PARC Researchers Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown brought forward a vision of a calm technology, where the interaction between a product and its user is designed to take place in the user’s periphery rather than at the center of attention. Instead of interrupting and confusing us, technology would enhance our humanness and allow us to achieve a goal with the least amount of mental cost.

TIME WELL SPENT MANIFESTO BY TRISTAN HARRIS, DESIGN THINKER, PHILOSOPHER, AND ENTREPRENEUR

“We live in an attention economy where products or websites win by getting our time. It’s a race to the bottom of the brain stem to hijack our mind. We’re left constantly distracted. Either we connect, but constantly get sucked in. Or we unplug, but lose all the benefits of technology completely.

We have had enough. We need to restore choice. We believe in a new kind of design, that lets us connect without getting sucked in. And disconnect, without missing something important. And we believe in a new kind economy that’s built to help us spend time well, where products compete to help us live by our values. Let’s start that conversation now.”

Sources: Tristan Harris, Ofcom, BBC, Calmtech.com

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DEVELOPING ANTIBODIES

According to theorist Paul Graham, societies eventually develop antibodies to addictive new things, much like we once did for cigarette consumption. Some developments in this direction include:

Digital detox: Fifteen million people in the UK, 34 percent of British internet users, have undertaken a “digital detox” to strike a healthier balance between technology and life beyond the screen in the past year.

The right to disconnect: In May 2016, France codified le droit de la déconnexion – the right to disconnect – as part of new labor legislation.

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FIRST AIDREMEDIES FOR TECHNOLOGY ADDICTION

SCREENERS (CHINO KIM): Computer vision glasses that turn surrounding screens opaque

For those looking to cut down on their screen time but lacking the willpower, Screeners, which are glasses that use computer vision and smart film to detect screens, automatically blocks the wearer from looking at screens by turning opaque whenever a screen is detected. Official web

HOT POT (IKEA): A hot pot table that require dinner attendees to temporarily trade in their smart-phones to cook the meal

The IKEA hot pot table is powered by smartphones, requiring that everyone at the table place their phone into the pot for it to function. If someone removes his or her phone, the heat drops and the food cannot be cooked properly. Click here

PUNKT. MP01: A back-to basics mobile phone exclusively for calling and texting

The Punkt. MP01 is a back-to-basics mobile phone that only makes phone calls and sends texts. It can import phone contacts from a computer via USB cable and can be twinned to a users smartphone SIM card.

ALTRUIS KOVERT DESIGNS: A smart jewellery system that notifies the wearer of priority notifications

The Altruis Kovert modular smart jewellery system is designed for users who want to go on a digital detox, and only check their mobiles when absolutely necessary. The smart stone (made from zirconia ceramics) connects to iPhones via Bluetooth Smart and subtly vibrates when the user gets priority notifications.

BASECAMP AND SLACK: Software systems that silence and halt notifications for downtime

Under the motto “Work Can Wait”, project management vendor Basecamp introduced a feature that allows users to halt notifications and email, to silence work “so you – and your family – can enjoy your downtime.”

Chatbot Slack offers a similar feature with its “Do not disturb” mode that allows users to silence the notifications during time off.

PEPPER HACKER: A pepper grinder that turns tech off and family dinnertime on

The Dolmio “Pepper Hacker” looks like an ordinary pepper grinder from the outside, but actually has technology hidden inside that lets parents turn off Wi-Fi routers, mobile phones, and even televisions for 30 minutes –all with a simple, single twist of the grinder. Click here

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DIVE DEEPER

I Used to Be a Human Being, NYMAG.COM, September 2016

The Binge Breaker – Tristan Harris believes Silicon Valley is addicting us to our phones. He’s determined to make it stop, The Atlantic, November 2016

The Flight From Conversation, The Atlantic, Oct 2015

A New Theory of Distraction, New Yorker, June 2015

Can’t Put Down Your Device? That’s by Design, New York Times, Dec 2015

Technology and Persuasion, MIT Technology Review, Mar 2015

Hooking Users In 3 Steps: An Intro to Habit Testing and People Don’t Want Something Truly New, They Want the Familiar Done Differently, by Nir Eyal

Why Do I Keep Interrupting Myself?: Environment, Habit and Self-Interruption, Laura Dabbish from Carnegie Mellon, Gloria Mark from University of California, Irvine, and Victor Gonzalez from Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo in Mexico, Dec 2011

The Brain in Your Pocket: Evidence that Smartphones are Used to Supplant Thinking, University of Waterloo published in Journal of Computers in Human Behavior July 2015

Searching for Explanations: How the Internet Inflates Estimates of Internal Knowledge, Journal of Experimental Psychology 2015, Vol. 144

The Extended iSelf: The Impact of iPhone Separation on Cognition, Emotion, and Physiology, Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, Jan 2015

And Their Eyes Glazed Over, Joelle Renstrom Boston University Aeon, Sep 2016

The rise and Impact of Digital Amnesia, Kaspersky Lab, June 2015

TEXT

How Better Tech Could Protect Us from Distraction, TED, Tristan Harris, Dec 2014

Empowering Design; (Ending the Attention Economy, Talk #1), Joe Edelman

How to Win Your Competition’s Customers, How to Use Hooks’ by Nir Eyal

NPR Debate: Is Smart Technology Making Us Dumb?, NPR podcast, featuring Nicolas Carr, Andrew Keen, Genevieve Bell, David Weinberger

Calm Technology with cyber anthropologist Amber Case

VIDEO & AUDIO

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Out of the Blue is a periodic publication from the Oliver Wyman CMT (Communications, Media and Technology) Research and Knowledge Management Team aimed at highlighting trends within the communication, media and technology space.

The Out of the Blue Team

Communications, Media and Technology Knowledge Management

Mia Burner, Senior Knowledge Manager Borja Xercavins, Senior Consultant

Editorial

Lorenzo Miláns del Bosch, Partner, Madrid Iria Aparicio, Manager, Knowledge Management

Marketing

Kate Wildman

Design

Paloma Sanchez Michael Tveskov Melissa Ureksoy

For more information, please visitwww.oliverwyman.com

Copyright© Oliver Wyman