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In late 2004
that offered some of the ﬁrst reliable data on
began a series of experiments
how culture shapes thinking.
Culture and the Physical Environment: Holistic Versus Analytic Perceptual Affordances –– Yuri Miyamoto, Richard E. Nisbett, and Takahiko Masuda –– http://bit.ly/hOMl6z

Half of the students had been raised and educated in the United States
Half had been raised in China

The research subjects were shown 36 images
3 seconds each

X
After each image...

Screen returned to the white background with a

Students were asked to refocus on the cross

American students immediately...

looked at the foreground objects
And once they spotted that image...

...they spent the bulk of the time looking right at it.

The Chinese, by contrast...

environment
...usually looked at the

around the main object ﬁrst,
probing the background of forest or ﬁeld.

They did look at the focal object, but for far less time than the Americans did.

The Americans...

Had a better ability to recall speciﬁc
objects they had seen:
a horse, a tiger, a ﬁghter jet.

The Chinese...

Often forgot what object had been
in a given scene but recalled the
backgrounds in detail.

“East Asians live in relatively complex social networks with prescribed role relations.

Attention to context is therefore
important for effective functioning.”
–Richard Nisbett

In contrast, Westerners live in less constraining social worlds that
stress independence and allow them to

pay less attention to context.”
–Richard Nisbett

Would American students notice a
change in the environment if the focal
object remained the same?

Most of the students missed the shift.
When it came to the context, Americans were almost completely

“change blind.”
–Richard Nisbett

The tiger in Nisbett’s image, for instance...
took up about 25% of the space on the screen,

but it captured 80% or more of the Western students’ attention.

Luke Williams: BRITE '11 Conference at Columbia University

Anytime you hear a response from industry leaders that seems to

focus on just one new technology or solution...

...you should feel anxious.

In some circles, the iPad was known as

“the Jesus tablet.”
- The New Yorker

It’s easy to get caught up in the technology aspects that we can see and touch.

The screen resolution
The gestural interface
Flipping the orientation

taken on
As a result, the content evolution on mobile devices has

some predictable trajectories.

Now, with more choices than ever!

The idea is to please customers by giving them what they expect,

Technology is important.

But we shouldn’t place it at the center of our thinking.

An obsessive focus on technology is myopic.

There is a revolution taking place, but it has little to do
with faster or smarter tech.

It’s about behavior.

The frame of reference completely counter-intuitive to us,
because it conﬂicts with the assumed conventions.

inferior to that of CDs
The sound quality of MP3s is far

Camera phones take much lower resolution than ﬁlm

Web-streamed videos offer poorer picture quality than DVDs

Source: The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple Is Just Fine – Robert Capps, Wired Magazine – http://bit.ly/erCMLb

When consumer behavior changes...

sooner or later new brand thinking must follow.

Look at your brand and mix it in a multitude of

unpredictable ways.

1ne 2wo 3hree
CHANGE BLIND MYOPIA REVOLUTION

as they are.
Free ourselves from seeing things

So that we can see what they might become.

The task of the imagination is to do
the work of crisis without crisis.
–Roberto Unger, Harvard

@LukeGWilliams
disruptive–thinking.com

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Luke Williams: BRITE '11 Conference at Columbia University

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Luke Williams: BRITE '11 Conference at Columbia University

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