The "Honest Store" promotion is pretty simple: Honest Tea (owned in largest part by Coca-Cola) set up unmanned kiosks in central city locations, offering their wares at an indicated price of a dollar a bottle. Of course, kiosks unmanned, payment was on the honor system. The catch, as you might expect, was that each kiosk was equipped with hidden cameras to decide which big-city folk are honest enough to cough up for their bottle.

Via NBC Chicago

How "honest" were people? The tallies vary from 75% (Los Angeles) to 93.3% (Boston), with New York and Atlanta falling between at 89%, and DC a nearby second-place at 93%.

We, at DLB, have got a few questions about this promotional scheme. First of all, it seems clear enough that what's being tested here isn't necessarily how honest people are, but — just as likely — people's wherewithal. Nobody in their right mind should be able to see an unmanned corporate kiosk in the age of social media without asking herself what the catch is. I'm inclined to think that the results of this experiment are just as germane to the claim that the citizens of Boston deliberate correctly at 93.3% as they are to the claim that the citizens of Boston act honestly at a rate of 93.3%.

But, esoteric and pragmatic worries to one side, I think the real question is this one: how honest is the honest store? Doesn't it strike a dubious note to test honesty with hidden cameras? Does tricking people into being dishonest for the sake of a promotion undermine the moral authority of the experimenters?

For the record, finally, all proceeds of the Honest Tea Honest Store social experiment are being donated to City Year, a non-profit organization that "unites young people of all backgrounds for a year of full-time service" in metropolitan areas. So, on the face of it, that seems good. But, of course, and with Milton Glaser (cf. §2) now, "C'mon!"

A nice diagram at Experience matters caught my eye today, when reading this post.

Although it looks to me like the author of the article conflates application insecurities (buffer overflows, unvalidated form input, improper exception handling, etc.) with what we used to call cases of social engineering (popularly represented these days by phishing), the main point here is worth heeding: our dumb behavior on social media sites leaves us vulnerable to cybercrime.

What's worse: in the age of the personal brand, where there may be good prima facie reasons to "add" contacts you don't recognize, those tinyurl-filled twitter streams become a minefield. I think it's incontestable that now more than ever, it's easy to make a dangerous mistake.

Here's Lindsay's nifty flowchart, which may be of some potential use for those remaining credulous internet users we all know.

1. Workplace Ethics: The High Cost of Compromise

Kirk O. Hansen recently made some interesting observations about the ethical challenges that will face new college graduates. Facing the current, difficult economy, Hansen claims, will "make ethical decisions even tougher."

Because it has been difficult this year to land any job, new graduates will be less likely to resist, less likely to put their new position at risk in order to do the right thing. And that threatens to undermine the ethical character of this year's graduates at the outset of their careers.

John Constable, Detail from Seascape Study with Rain Cloud (c.1824)

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Rough Type alerted us to a new Pew study which indicates that blogging "has declined in popularity among both teens and young adults since 2006."

Here are the highlights of the study:

• 14% of online teens now say they blog, down from 28% of teen internet users in 2006.
• This decline is also reflected in the lower incidence of teen commenting on blogs within social networking websites; 52% of teen social network users report commenting on friends’ blogs, down from the 76% who did so in 2006.
• By comparison, the prevalence of blogging within the overall adult internet population has remained steady in recent years. Pew Internet surveys since 2005 have consistently found that roughly one in ten online adults maintain a personal online journal or blog.

Not to be too glib about this, but, *obviously*. Blogging is a lot of work. You have to construct and type sentences, often simultaneously. You have to think of something to write about. You have to develop that thought across multiple sentences. You have to make inferences, sometimes even explicitly.

In sum, blogging is a royal pain in the ass, especially when compared to now-available social media technologies (i.e. Facebook, Twitter) which have none of the above requirements.

So, should we be surprised that these average young Americans don't choose to do more work? No. Not at all. After all, it doesn't surprise us that MUD-playing and fiction-reading are down significantly among teens, and that MMORPG playing and television-watching are way up.

It takes a special kind of masochist to write a blog, and I think that masochism can only be born of experience. The less people are forced to read and write, the less of them will learn to enjoy it, hence, the less of them will do it. Consider, for example, that instead of this post, I could have just tweeted:

Blogs are over: http://bit.ly/aj1ZfT.

And you could have been on your way five minutes ago.

While the makers of the Wheelmate Steering Wheel Desk Tray (a desk that attaches to your steering wheel "for easy access to a writing and drink storage surface") warn consumers that they ought not use this product while driving, "for safety reasons," users of Amazon.com have lit up switchboard at the product's Amazon Customer Image Gallery and Customer Reviews section, registering their views on the fatuousness of this warning, and on the danger of this product design more generally. It's an unusually great moment for Amazon customer feedback working as a vehicle for social critique.

Oh, did I mention it's damn funny?

Some Choice Customer Images

Some Choice Customer Reviews

These worked great in the cockpit for our tanscontinental flights!, November 4, 2009

My copilot and I both used these during our "daily grind" transcontinental flights from San Diego to Minneapolis. We had to modify them a bit to fit snug against the instrument panels (when we bought them we didn't realize the planes we fly don't have steering wheels!), but in the end it did the job. With our laptops firmly in place we were able to focus our attention on what really mattered, participating in raids with our WoW clan. During our last flight we were so immersed in trying to take down Eranikus that we overshot Minneapolis by a full hour and a half before some annoying flight attendant interrupted us, babbling something about "FAA and F16 fighters."

We'll definitely use this product again at our next gig, whatever and whenever that happens to be...

Highly recommended!

Amazing! Holds my sheet music perfectly while driving., May 7, 2009

This has been a total lifesaver. It allows me to prop my sheet music against the wheel, allowing me to play the guitar with both hands while driving.

Makes a boring drive easier, November 19, 2009

You wouldn't believe how much more interesting my commute is now that I have something to do other than just stare out the window! I'm using it right now to post this review and I never

Derrick Kuzak, Ford's product development chief, told reporters on Jan. 4 that "we are intent on maintaining leadership in this kind of connectivity. We saw people becoming addicted to connectivity and we saw increased use of these devices inside the car and we connected the dots."

...Ford said it's augmenting Sync with the ability to convert incoming texts into spoken words. It will offer drivers 15 standard text responses that can be sent with a voice command. Ford is still researching the ability to convert speech to a text message, said Jim Buczkowski, its director of electronics.

And, in perhaps the best moment of bad design decision rationalization of 2010 so far:

Most of the industry studies show that just driving and just talking is the same," Kuzak said. "As long as the customer's eyes are on the road, they are not compromised.

Image via Geekologie

Via Core77

Facebook users addicted to social games, and eager to accelerate their progress, often buy "virtual goods" -- such as a machine gun for "Mafia Wars" -- with "virtual currency".

One of the ways to acquire this currency is by accepting offers from third-parties, usually companies who agree to give the gamer virtual currency so long as that gamer agrees to try a product or service.

According to The Business Insider, an anti-reform group called "Get Health Reform Right" was recently caught paying gamers virtual currency for their support. Instead of asking the gamers to try a product, "Get Health Reform Right" requires gamers to take a survey, which, upon completion, automatically sends the following email to their Congressional Rep:

"I am concerned a new government plan could cause me to lose the employer coverage I have today. More government bureaucracy will only create more problems, not solve the ones we have."

While not apparently illegal, this practice is obviously ethically problematic.

A Screenshot of the "Get Health Reform Right" Survey

Disturbing.

In the Shadow of Foreclosures, via.

The Harvard Business Review has an excellent article about our favorite topic, design ethics. There, Umair Haque has eight interesting points. I'll paraphrase several for you below.

1. Toxicity: Wall Street's subprime crisis was built on toxic financial instruments. The mediascape's subprime crisis is being built on toxic communications.
2. Value Chain Expansion: The financial crisis happened in large part because of massive reintermediation. Banks sold debt it to the next guy, who sold it to the next guy, and so on. What was once a simple, short value chain lengthened to the point of absurdity. Exactly the same value chain pattern is surfacing in media.
3. Unnovation: The deeper issue is this: The digital economy is supported wholesale by ads, but no one's improved ads. In the final analysis, every industry that does not improve must reach the crisis point.
4. Ethics: Every financial collapse is really just an ethical collapse that happened a few years earlier. Is the state of advertising in ethical crisis? Obviously, we think so. And if that sounds familiar, recall Wall Street 2001-2008.

A very nice article, and some serious food for Monday thought.