Author Tom P. Schaafs

Functional fixedness and other psychological quirks

Our minds do some things without any conscious involvement. Let’s call these subconscious things ‘mental quirks’. And let’s presume they can be found in pretty much all human beings. Then these mental quirks are worthwhile knowing to: overcome them e.g. in creative challenges (lateral thinking) use them in e.g. NetFlix 10% algorithm improvement (behavioral economics) […]

The damn exception: immunization for service systems

The well planned and thought through service system of the train operating company failed. And of course it did, it had to. It is impossible to anticipate and design-in the myriads of scenarios a system gets exposure to. This can only be done by perpetual improvement.