This article was written for members of the Intranet Professionals LinkedIn group. But the full text didn't fit there, so I'm publishing it publicly on here instead for any UX nerd to learn something cool. 

Hello intranet experts! 

I’m making an intranet for a client. We’ve adapted a solidly performing IA from the company's previous intranet. 

So I’m rebuilding the dynamic main menu that contains the IA. Hover the mouse over the first level section (1LS), and it displays its 2nd level sections (2LS). Hover over one of those, you get a list of 3LSs and articles. Hover over a 3LS and you get a list of its articles. Click article, get info. Familiar right?

This approach means that for a bit of mouse wiggling, ONE click, and ONE page-load, users can navigate to any intranet content. Love it! A worthy Golden Standard for menus.

But In order for this menu to perform intuitively, I’ve got to arrange these 2LSs in the order in which they’re most used. Doing the Product section, for example, the 2LS “Carpet” is first because this company sells more carpet than “Tiles”. More “Tiles” than “Commercial”. More “Commercial” than “Accessories” like curtains and rugs. 

Then I think about that last comparison. Yes, Commercial flooring forms a major revenue stream. But! There are more actual transactions in which small products (like rugs and curtains) are sold to customers. 

So which should I place higher in this dropdown menu? And there’s the epiphany: 

I should be sequencing them based on HOW OFTEN my lovely users look up content in these 2LSs. Maybe they need to refer to a table several times per sale for one product — or can sell some products without looking anything up. 

​Therefore I need to use actual web metrics and user behaviours to determine the right page order, and focus on the question “which content is looked at with the highest frequency?” 

This is common sense for you IA pros, but I am one of those too and this very nearly caught me out. So I figured I’d share that with you. 

Why do I bother screwing around with these menu to such a tiny degree of detail? 

Because the pay off is in micro-movements of the wrist — by not having to move the mouse cursor as many millimetres when navigating in this precise little menu. In tangible terms that stuff adds up to faster work time. Because every client's users deserve a precision solution.

In intangible terms the pay off is in less reading. I’m talking about the psychological aspect of “Why the scrud is this insignificant category higher in the menu the main product category!?”

Avoiding those little moments yields a better user experience. Which can also be measured in knowledge worker satisfaction, and ultimately productivity, ROI, and all those other big quality metrics. 

I’d love to hear other IA epiphanies like this if you guys have got them to share. I find the little details of making incredible information-seeking experiences infinitely interesting. :) 

Michael ​

Or do you mean the number of Academy Award nominations an actor received? Hmm, that’s not actually a formal system of rating in itself, but OK if that’s what you mean. The comment kind of has meaning. 

Your perception of popularity among humans? Oh dear. This is what the comment tries and fails to express whenever no formal and recognisable system of rating applies; one is being appealed to for its authority. The problem is, that appeal is fictional and the authority non-existent. All that non-meaning packaged up into a one word implication. Impressive!

So what’s the problem with that? 

The problem is not saying what we mean. 

It’s a hazardous habit to practice! By stating an assumption that a formal and recognisable rating system exists for objectively measuring the subject’s value, use of the terms “overrated” and “underrated” tries and fails to frame the speaker’s subjective and personal opinion in an objectively measurable way. 

That, friends, is what we call a “crap shoot”.

The behaviour achieves nothing more than the complete benefit denial of the conversation. Who wants that? Nobody! 

Can we explore in more detail what the speaker may mean when using the word “underrated” or its opposite? 

Here’s my interpretation of it with a logic breakdown. It’s perhaps not the only possible breakdown, but it’s the one I feel can be most broadly applied. Phraseology is based on how I typically think and communicate. 

​The COMPREHENSION LOGIC above happens fast. Thoughts are fast. By identifying that no formal and recognisable rating system exists, interpreting the comment for what it is — an expression of desire to modify what other people like — leads almost immediately to the universally useful question “what do you want to achieve in this conversation?”. 

The CONVERSATION LOGIC is slow to get through. Speaking is slow. Asking all those questions turns what was quite likely just a clumsily expressed feeling into an impromptu intent interview and analysis of the speaker. Not necessarily an effective use of your time. 

Nevertheless! It’s useful to be aware of why garbage-grade phrasings like “overrated” and “underrated” are so worthless so that you can address them if and when you feel like doing so. 

It’s not known what the effects long term effects are of allowing subjectivity to masquerade as objectivity in human communication. Maybe you’re fine with that. But now you have a perspective to help you spot it. 

The way I feel about subjective issues being phrased in a faux-objective manner is that it’s the conversational equivalent of blowing smoke into someone else’s face; it’s unpleasant, wholly useless, and worst of all... it stinks! 

​Wrongdoing is simple, right?

​Any action resulting in a more significant negative consequence than positive consequence. Because actions are measured by their consequences. 

​For now though, let’s dive deeper into the dumpster not of law, but of wrongdoing. 

The definition of wrongdoing is therefore purely dependent on your definitions of “negative” and “positive”. But many of us agree on the big stuff: harming people’s bodies is negative. Gaining resources is positive. Trading useless resources that are beneficial to another party in kind is very positive. 

To objectively to determine the wrongness or rightness of a given action there’s a complex analysis to be done on any behaviour, involving the negative and positive impact of all known consequences. We usually handle that just based on how we feel about stuff. 

We’re pretty good at that. 

But it’s interesting to understand why wrongdoing perpetuates. Wouldn’t it be good if everyone, before taking an action, considered in advance the positive and negative consequences of that action and based the decision to act or not act or modify the action based on maximising positive effect? Yes it would. 

In fact we would call it Utopia. 

But we don’t have time for the decision analysis it would take to achieve utopia. Until that’s automated we’ll carry on with the trial and error, to gain decision informing data a hell of a lot faster than premeditative research would yield. 

Fair enough. 

But until we can automate the information acquisition requisite for exclusively positive-effect decision making (also called “rightdoing”), we are going to continue accepting a bit of wrongdoing in our own and others’ behaviour. 

Like its counterpart rightdoing, the consequences of wrongdoing can affect others. Those to whom rightdoing is done are called benefactors. Those to whom wrongdoing is done are called victims. 

Also like rightdoing, wrongdoing can carry consequences of replication. Another way of saying that is:

Wrongdoing replicates itself in a nasty way: by a wrongdoer turning people into victims (bad enough) -— but then turning some of those victims into wrongdoers! 

Here’s the diagram of how it works. 

​“Yuck! Some baddie can turn me into a baddie! And there’s nothing I can do about it?” 

There’s actually a lot you can do about it. In fact, when you’re victimised, the only part that’s out of your control is the victimisation and suffering. Yes, those are done to you. Everything after that is over to you, and you can act or fail to act as you please. 

Most victimisations result in a resolution. That can take many forms. It might be grand, like the breakthrough result after years of therapy. Or it could be as dull as “getting over” the event. The definition of a resolution is making the choice not to have your behaviour and identity negatively affected by the victimisation. 

If that fails, however, the result is bad. That result means that an act of wrongdoing has had such an impact on the victim that it has resulted in (perhaps consciously untraceable) behaviour and identity changes resulting in more negative-result behaviours being undertaken than would have been undertaken had the victim not been victimised. 

What do I mean by “untraceable”? Can the causation of wrongdoing be traced back to earlier experiences of victimisation? Or more generally, can the causation of any human behaviour be traced back to its causative experiences? 

In an adequate therapeutic environment, theoretically yes. 

In our current era we rarely bother. It would be useful, but much like doing premeditative research in decision making, it currently fits in the too hard basket. 

But there’s good news. 

Like any field of science, psychology is making progress. Rehabilitation is on the increase, and the fundamental tenet of it... 

...is on the rise as well. 

Utopia, as we defined it above, is not yet within reach. Not even close. 

But it is in this direction. 

Thanks for learning! 
Michael

And here it is.

MY DISCLAIMER: You can record ideas using any model at all. I developed this model to maximise the effort to reward ratio of producing the idea record. I use this model every day, and it's been instrumental in capturing a large enough volume of ideas that I am able to pick the ones I like most to create fun and revenue-generating side projects from them. This is something anyone can do, and banking ideas is a key part of it. 

Now onto the model. It's got 3 parts.

And that's it!

That’s your new system for recording your ideas. These records aren’t going to be big, until you flesh them out and write in the details: crossing the threshold from an IDEA to a DESIGN.

You can create a Google Drive document for each idea. Very useful if you want to create an Idea Bank you can browse any time you’re inspired to work on something you find interesting! Also gives you space to add details to develop the idea into a design, and write up the development plan.

Or just jot them into a note-taking app on your phone, or a notebook, and keep them there.

The beauty of this system is that it’s so concise that you can even write an idea on the back of your hand if you just need to get it down fast! Memory is fickle -- don’t ever believe your brain when it tells you “this idea is so good I’ll never forget it!” The fact is, without regular thought-cycling, your brain can and will forget anything... even a million dollar idea!

Feel like giving an idea away? Write an idea on public bathroom wall, and you might just create the most high-value graffiti ever published. Or you can Tweet it with the tag #FreeIdea and maybe someone else will benefit from your genius!

Whatever you do with your ideas, record them with Observation, Opportunity, and Objective. When you come back to them after 12 years they will still be perfectly intelligible and unambiguous in their context, their benefit, and their value to you.

This idea recording model is really just condensed common sense: All ideas are based on a key observation, like a personal problem, or a market gap, or an inefficiency. All new ideas have an opportunity to do something different and new. And all ideas can be assigned (by you) an objective so you can use the opportunity to gain value (i.e. get what you want).

Or create value for others (i.e. give someone else what they want).

Or both (i.e. everyone gets what they want).

You have that power. So use it! No more wasting ideas. 

Thanks for learning!
Michael 

My last painting of 2015 is good enough to be my first post of 2016. Have a prosperous 2016, all you information superstars. Let nothing stand in your way. 

​Michael

This new video on the Concept Frontier InfoPod introduces the incredibly pervasive Fear of Reaction.

AND it gives you an absurdly easy way to prevent it ruining your decisions.

That's a high value way to spend 5 minutes! 

Now you can beat the Fear of Reaction whenever it comes up. Aren't you clever? 

Help our channel grow by giving the greatest gift of all:  your LIKE! 

If you're serious about information SUBSCRIBE to our channel and become an Information Superstar! 

Thanks for learning! I'll see you in the next video. 
Michael Pritchard

Having a positive experience in life includes taking responsibility for ones actions. All clear-thinking people seem to do this most of the time with little effort. 

But it also includes taking responsibility for our emotions. 

All of your emotions.

And it's not that often that we do this. 

Typically, the closest we come to the level of self-awareness that compels us to discuss our feelings is by saying things like:

"You made me angry." 
"That makes me sad." 
"This makes me feel uneasy." 
"She made it awkward." 
"This depresses me." 

We hear comments like these all the time. But even though they sound legitimate, and certainly feel truthful while we say them, every one of those statements – and indeed any statement discussing feelings in the same sentence structure – is completely untrue. 

Let's substantiate that with a basic fact. 

Every emotional reaction that a human has arises from exclusively internal sources. The emotion itself is dictated by a series of rules that are ultimately determined by the values, beliefs, desires, needs, and expectations of the person experiencing the feeling. We launch this rule evaluation process in response to an external perception, a memory, or a new thought, but such triggers don't create emotions: our rules do.

Most of our lives we perceive things, remember things, or think things with no emotional reaction. How much emotion are you responding with to the sensation of pressure caused by part of your bodyweight passing through your feet while you're reading this? How much emotion do you give to seeing an individual blade of grass on a lawn? Or your keys where you left them, or a stranger talking on the phone? There's any number of things we don't have an emotional reaction to. 

By the fact that we experience so much that we don't react emotionally to, we can deduce that our rules only apply in certain situations. That means there are rules that determine when an emotional response is even warranted. This tells us that our emotions are controlled wholly by our rules. 

​Here's a list of major factors involved in our rule making. As you read each definition, identify some of your own values, expectations, beliefs, desires, and needs that are involved in some of the stronger emotional responses you have had. Write them down if you're serious about gaining control over your emotions. 

​Values are the principles by which we define what's acceptable and unacceptable. 

They're determined by our beliefs and needs.

They influence our desires and expectations.
​
They also influence our beliefs. Note the circular logic inherent between forming beliefs and values: wanting something to be true can cause us actually believe it to be true, for better or for worse. 

Expectations are what we think is likely to happen; the results of our judgement. They can be formed consciously (as in the Deductive Reasoning Process) or unconsciously.

They're influenced by beliefs. 

​Beliefs are our personal perception of truth and fact. 

They determine our values. 

They're also influenced by our values (as mentioned above) and by our desires and needs.  

​Desires are the rewards we want from our efforts. Desire is one of the two fundamental motivating factors for all human behaviours. 

They're determined by our needs and values. 

​Needs are what will cause us to avoid suffering. Need is one of the two fundamental motivating factors for all human behaviours. 

They're predetermined by our physiology, and detailed best in the Maslow Hierarchy. 

​They're influenced by our values. 

The substance of these elements is determined by only two motivating factors: biological compulsion and free will. The lowest two rungs of the Maslow Hierarchy describe the biological compulsion. Free will determines all of the rest. 

Free will, however, is exactly that: the ability to consciously or unconsciously select values, beliefs, behaviours, desires, and expectations. This selection exists exclusively at the whim of the individual concerned. No other force than your own mind has any influence over these. 

These elements comprise the process which yields an emotional response to a stimulus. The process is triggered whenever our trigger rules' criteria are met. A common example would be perceiving something we deem significant (like hearing someone speak, suffering a heart attack, seeing a helicopter explode mid-flight, feeling a tortoise walk across our foot, smelling a cup of coffee, and so on). Once the process is triggered, the new information passes through the ruleset, and the result determines what emotional response we will then have. 

The fact that every emotion you experience cannot reasonably be blamed on external factors is vital to keep in mind.

Because the emotions come from you; if you don't like them then it's up to you alone to figure out how to change them.

Fortunately you can achieve that systematically. 

So how can I control my emotions? 

Controlling your emotions means rewriting your personal rulebook.

You can manipulate the ruleset by creating values, expectations, beliefs, desires, and needs that make the most sense to you based on your own best judgement.

Throughout your life to date this has largely happened automatically. But now you're about to find that exerting conscious effort to tailor beliefs is not only possible, but extremely useful. It's the only way to make changes to the internal ruleset that determines the emotional response in any situation. 

The first step is to record all your values, beliefs, needs, desires, and expectations. Needs you can get from Maslow's  Hierarchy of Needs and you can't change them – everything else you'll need to delve into your own psyche. 

Once you have your list, consider the merit of each item. When did you form it? Who does it help? How much does it help? Who does it hurt? How much does it hurt? 

WHY did you form it in the first place? 

What emotional response does it produce most often? 

Is there a chance it be based on incorrect information? 

What can you change about it to make it more helpful? 

Why do you feel so strongly about keeping it? 

In this process of rule-analysis, beliefs will be very difficult to change. Values even more so. You'll feel strong emotions as you try. You can manage that by coming back to it later. But to take control of your emotions you need to get through the whole list, and add any other buried beliefs to the list as they come up. 

For each item in your rulebook, you'll face the decision of which is more important: The old belief OR your desire to control your emotions. The more you compromise on this and retain beliefs that produce in you strong negative emotions, the less emotional control you'll end up with. 

Additional techniques and exercises and techniques for editing ones own beliefs, expectations, desires, and values will follow in subsequent articles – including the introduction of the DORVA Scale of emotion measurement coming soon! (release date: 1 January 2016) 

Immediate Changes 

Perhaps the most valuable change you can make immediately is to stop blaming your feelings on other people or events, and start taking responsibility for ALL of them yourself. This will require a change to the way you discuss them.

Instead of saying "This event made me feel <emotion>," phrase it more accurately: "I feel <emotion> because I disliked that event." 

Ask yourself why you disliked the event. What values did it offend? What beliefs did it contradict? What expectation did it thwart? What desire or need did the event deny you, or someone else? 

By examining the reasons for any strong feelings you have, you'll turn up beliefs, desires, and expectations that might not already be on your original list. 

And by beginning to think and talk about your emotions in terms of beliefs, values, needs, desires, and expectations, you'll gain a far deeper understanding of the way your feelings work, and more opportunities to get the outcomes you desire. 

Next time someone asks you "How did that make you feel?" remember that  it didn't MAKE you feel anything; Your emotional reaction was the result of a conflict with one or more values, expectations, beliefs, desires, or needs. 

So a better question for them to ask is "How do you feel about that?" Notice that's the phrasing clinical psychologists tend to use. 

Once you start thinking about the underlying conflicts behind negative emotions, you'l have taken the first step to emotional self-control.

And once you've fully re-written your rulebook, you'll be in total command of your emotions no matter the circumstances. 

Thanks for learning! 

We're pleased to present our latest innovation: the Concept Frontier InfoPod! In this video series our host will delve into the very nature of information, bringing you a new easily digestible information concept in every video.

The InfoPod video series will be supported by the Concept Blog, which will feature greater detail on the information models presented in each video. 

All content will be presented here on ConceptFrontier.com, so you won't miss anything even if you don't subscribe to our channel on YouTube.com 

The four major components of the formula are detailed below. 

1. Reward is the behaviour motivator, and what the ratio is all about. A reward is by definition an improvement of an individual's circumstances. It can be the attainment of something desired (like money, status, recognition, an experience —​ anything that we know will evoke a positive emotional response in us). A reward is no less of a reward if it does nothing more than improve our circumstances from bad to less bad. So long as we know it will carry a positive emotional reaction it's a reward, and can therefore be evaluated using the ratio.

2. The Reward forms half the equation, and is weighed against the Effort, Cost, and Risk of pursuing it to determine if action will be taken. If the Effort/Cost/Risk are perceived to be too great, the evaluated action is not taken:

​3. Measuring reward can sometimes be done in a tangible way: a monetary reward can be measured in dollars. But sometimes the reward is nothing more than a feeling, and measuring emotions is more difficult. For ease of use in this explanation we'll use a simple 1-10 scale for measuring emotional significance. 

1. Risk exists when there is a possibility of an undesired outcome. An action taken to gain a reward doesn't always have a single possible outcome: even if I take the action "order the pizza" to attain the reward "sate my hunger" there exists the chance that the order won't be fulfilled, or that I will throw the pizza onto the roof of my home in a spontaneous fit of rage. Either one of those two undesired possibilities robs me of my intended reward. But the most likely outcome is that I'll get a pizza to eat, achieving the desired outcome. So the risk is within an acceptable parameter for the action to be taken. In short, a risk is any chance of an outcome that is not desired.

2. Risk can drop reward attainment right in the toilet, particularly if the subject is afraid of risk. This is significant to the equation because a general fear of risk, or fear of a specific outcome, introduces emotional weight to decision-making, pitting our fear directly against our desire.

3. Once the risks of taking a given action have been considered, and the legitimate risks identified, they need to be evaluated for the likelihood of its occurrence versus the likelihood of the desired outcome.

So here I assign an estimated likelihood to each possible outcome: 
99.8% (Desired outcome) I receive a pizza to eat.
0.1% I receive no pizza.
0.1% I receive a pizza but throw it on the roof in anger.

There are any number of potential outcomes to an action of course. Analysis should only include those which are both foreseeable and significant. 

In this example I've determined there's very little risk of things not going as planned. Total risk is only 0.2%. Translating this to a simple 1-10 metric, the risk is 0/10: almost certain to yield the desired outcome.

The threshold is about how much negative you’re willing to tolerate for the attainment of something positive. It varies from person to person. A threshold too high would mean actions are approved and taken more often than the average person. A threshold too low would mean actions are not approved and taken as often as they are for the average person. The acceptance threshold is not fixed, however: it changes as we develop our judgement and get experience in accurately estimating the difficulty of effort, the significance of cost, and the likelihood of risks. ​

Opinions are thoughts validated by multiple observations and second hand evidence. They're formed simply by exposure to perceived evidence, regardless of evidence quality. Fortunately they are easily discarded or modified when more credible contrary evidence becomes available upon which to base a more informed opinion. 

Beliefs are the intermediate step between opinions and convictions. A belief forms when a sufficient quantity of evidence is amassed to justify exchanging memory-retained evidence for a strong feeling of certainty. We form beliefs to reduce cognitive load and free our attention for new thoughts. To form a belief, we remove the many thoughts that form the evidence for that belief from our thought cycle (because it's cognitively expensive to retain all that information when we can just hold onto the conclusion that all that evidence points to). We replace all that evidence information with only the conclusion itself: this is a belief. We also retain an emotional weighting of our surety of that conclusion, proportionate to the evidence we used to form it. By doing so, we free our thought cycle for new thoughts without losing the most important information obtained from the process of learning by storing that high-value thought as a belief. In short, a belief is an opinion where we've disposed of the supporting evidence and filled that space with a strong feeling of surety. 
Beliefs are harder to change than opinions, because in order to do so we have to pit new evidence against our strong feelings! This is difficult, cognitively expensive, and often we double-down on our feelings and simply get angry instead of evaluating the evidence. (My hypothesis is that it's often neurologically easier to intensify an emotion than it is to evaluate evidence contrary to an existing belief.) 

Convictions are thoughts reenforced by strong feelings of not sure surety but certainty. A conviction is an idea that has been accepted absolutely, by a person who has made the decision to entertain no evidence contrary to the conviction. Discourse challenging the conviction will, rather than prompt thought and re-evaluation of the evidence on which the conviction is based -- which at this point is often prohibitively difficult due to the abandonment of the thoughts forming the evidence -- and will instead become an emotional matter, in which the emotional weight of the conviction is weighed against he new evidence which will then be dismissed if it carries insufficient emotional weight of its own. 

Whenever we share our convictions we usually state them as if they're facts, which we are convinced that they are, since they're something we have learned. When others ask for evidence to support our claims of factuality we sometimes can't deliver and simply respond with "because it just is," with a sense of exasperation. 

Thats the cost of the exchange that occurs when beliefs mature into convictions. But the benefit of the exchange is that it frees our thought cycle for new observations, new thoughts, and new evidence on which we can form new beliefs and thereby continue learning. 

This is why its easier for us to form new beliefs than change our existing ones; we cant easily recall and reevaluate all the old evidence we've put out of circulation. 

Thought cycling is the repetition of thoughts through attention. An example is illustrated: 

The train of thought starts off thinking about squares. The thought vector (which could go in any direction, to literally any other thought!) happens to move to thinking about right angles. Next, a perception: the brain sees a road. It starts thinking about roads. Thought vector progresses to thinking about the angles between intersecting roads. Then a thought vector goes back to thinking about right angles. And lastly a vector moves on to thinking about the angles of squares (a very similar thought to the first thought in the train, but not exactly the same). 

In this train of thought (i.e. sequence of thoughts), the "thought cycle" is described thus: 

• 1 recurring thought ("right angles") 
• One perceptual input ("roads") 
• 5 internally derived thoughts ("squares", "right angles", "angles of roads", "right angles", "angles of squares") 
• 4 thought vector progressions between related thoughts 
• 2 cross-referenced thoughts ("angles of roads", "angles of squares") 
• 16.% (1 in 6) of thoughts were cycled in the train of thought twice, meaning it was "cycled" in the train of thought. 

Notice how much data is generated from just 6 sequential thoughts! Now consider that our day-to-day trains of thought are far more complex than this. They're non-stop! Trains of thought tens of thousands of thoughts long that generally include everything from the right amount of toothpaste to use, to what other people think of the way you look, to the state of the economy. The thoughts we cycle change in frequency according to our interests, our perceptions, and the direction of our attention. 

Since thoughts derive beliefs, and our beliefs determine our behaviour, it's wise to have an awareness of our own thoughts. And from time to time ask ourselves the question: "What is the most valuable thought I could think?"