Category Archives: Persuasion

Galileo as master salesman

By admin | February 5, 2010

It really doesn’t matter how brilliant an idea is if no one ever discovers it.
Chuck Dymer has a great article on the matter

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Grading with games

By admin | October 19, 2009

James Paul Gee of Arizona State University is a brilliant person with a compelling case for using video games in the service of assessment and learning without trying to separate the two as with the standard model practiced in the United States. He is a member of the National Academy of Education and is the [...]

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How did Madoff do it? Really?

By Andy Harris | March 18, 2009

How did Bernie Madoff get away with it for so long? He did it with secrecy, confusion, and above all else he cultivated trust in the right people who would do most of the influencing for him. I’m not so interested in the financial instruments and securities details of the situation; that was mostly a [...]

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We are hardwired to enjoy games

By Andy Harris | March 4, 2009

I won’t get into the brain science behind the title’s claim because it’s already widely accepted as truth. But I think Pearl Jam’s newest tactic to re-release the album that made them a pop icon is really remarkable for their use of a game to bring attention to an album. As an act of persuasion, [...]

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McDonalds Storefronts Across the World

By Andy Harris | February 6, 2009

Here’s a flickr group that I think is interesting. It’s dedicated to the storefronts of McDonald’s. It documents a challenging design problem for McDonalds that they seem to solve quite well. For most of the Midwestern US they simply setup along highways in underdeveloped neighborhoods which allowed them to construct their stores with a consistent [...]

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