#understanding that her diagram is not a pattern but a guideline on how to make your own pattern

[asterdeer]

video called "pirate shirt tutorial that actually makes sense" with a thumbnail clickbaitingly copying bernadette banner's style, which does the exact same thing as bernadette banner's video but more confusingly and without a diagram in the video itself, also failing to understand that bernadette banner's channel is primarily a history channel and not a sewing tutorial channel so telling people they don't have to hand-sew the pirate shirt or they don't have to thread-pull is unnecessary because bernadette banner literally said "do this however you want, i just do it this way because it's how i learn about historical dress practices" in her own video. couldn't ask for better youtube entertainment

[floraformyfauna-blog]

How To Create An Awesome Instagram Video About Stamped Concrete Rye New Hampshire

Resilient: Outdoor concrete surfaces are continuously exposed to the elements, earning them a lot more susceptible to stains and destruction. Exterior concrete resurfacing enables you to preserve them in an excellent condition for many years.

Hi, Matt. We questioned a stamped concrete skilled regarding the rust stains, and he indicates striving brake component cleaner (not brake fluid). It ought to be readily available at any vehicle aspect shop. Ensure to try this on an exceedingly compact space initially to be certain there aren't any sick Stamped Concrete consequences on the stamped concrete area.

Inquire the contractor to the addresses of several previous purchasers and drive by to take a look at their handywork. Speak to your homeowner who had stamped concrete do the job performed by that contractor a handful of years in the past so that you can see how the concrete stamping held up. Test Angie's List for reviews.

Your preparedness may make a change in how smoothly your undertaking gets set up. Print a replica of this diagram and check with it by Each individual phase of the challenge. Prior to deciding to understand it, you'll be taking pleasure in your new concrete far too! How to Hire a Contractor for Inside Concrete Perform

Concrete is just not a produced product or service that comes off an assembly line, so some slight imperfections are to become anticipated.

can be a senior editor at Angie’s Record, where she’s worked because 2006. Her preferred assignments include investigating shoddy contractors, and pitching tales relevant to Children and pets. She’s a work-from-residence Mother to two minor women and a large Good Dane.

Concrete has become The brand new flooring product of option for designers and homeowners across The us.

Homeowners should do not forget that weather conditions may be the No. 1 element all concrete contractors face. At times Work take longer because of climate delays. Get particulars on a backup strategy really should the task get delayed.

A stamped concrete patio features homeowners the possibility to receive Imaginative with out of doors spaces. They allow unique styles and colours to create a signature search. (Photograph courtesy of Salzano Concrete)

Alan Norton, principal of Sharper Edge, based in Chandler, Arizona, states career delays and problems is often part of the construction system. "We've been in company 25 several years and do greater than seven-hundred Careers a year," Norton responded when interviewed in 2012.

You don’t have to answer a series of inquiries prior to deciding to can begin to see the contractors in your area. We aren’t a middleman

You’re in comprehensive Charge of when, how and which contractors you contact. Your telephone is not heading to start ringing off the hook following working with our web site. Guidelines for HIRING A CONCRETE CONTRACTOR

"I explain to people to ask for addresses of twenty reference jobs to go see — if they cannot come up with that speedily, then a thing is Improper," Salzano says.

"Adhered to Preliminary agenda forecast for completion. Reinforcing metal placement and concrete placement went really nicely. Construction Total was Superb. Only unfavorable could be the stamping process that left some void parts alongside the sting from the driveway wherever the stamped sample was really faint. Chosen brick pattern needed to be utilized uniformly throughout the width of your driveway to deliver the expected effect of hand laid brick. All other design actions were being exceptional.

[yourbasementofbouquetsworld-blog]

Review of My Survival Farm by ReviewsMagz - My personal Trustworthy Consideration

Howdy there and here is our writeup on My Survival Farm scam. This report could be busted into a few most important portions: 1. While in the to begin with department, you will find conventional information about My Survival Farm Download also, the essential subject matter dealt with during the lead. 2. While in the minute section, you will understand about the advantages and disadvantages with this survival gardening strategy. 3. During the last page, we are going to summarize our opinion of this course in an effort to build a final choice. Basic Fundamentals Developed by Dan F. Sullivan, the proprietor and editor-in-main of SurvivalSullivan.com, My Survival Farm Review by fat -loss-activation-review/">ReviewsMagz is really a detailed tips for getting a sure survival landscaping process which can help you mature a variety of natural fruit and veggies without digging, watering, fertilizing, and weeding. The horticulture or gardening way you’ll figure out within the My Survival Farm Download lessons known as permaculture. It’s a helpful way for establishing lasting strategies to increasing nutrition while working with characteristics. Dan F. Sullivan talks about that to successfully obtain the best successes, he dealt with two those who have years of expertise accomplishing permaculture: Jeanie and Elizabeth. To put it briefly, on this website are some of the crucial things you will master in his or her instruction: Details on preparation, building, and developing this excessive-generate survival garden Measures for planning a fit soil, and this specific components that you can put in your compost. Crucial techniques to cover up the garden, so prospective looters can’t take your meals A number of 50 therapeutic vegetation you must shrub inside of your backyard and information about you can use them during the course of problems as well as treating diverse problems How one can grow around 125 vegetables, and even approaches for picking the right designs for your specific weather conditions Recommendations on how you can put together hedges which may not merely cover your front yard and yard and definitely will also provide one other source of amazing and sensible food A number of most liked traditional plants which could provide food stuff all-all year long with no need to re-vegetation them every year Small-identified tricks on developing permaculture are employed in modest rooms Easy methods to keep on insects at a distance without needing chemical type-focused bug sprays An in-range talk on “permaculture-friendly” cats Information to have your personally own organically grown fertilizers All you have to know on the way to mature Stevia, and a lot more. Dan F. Sullivan offers six bonuses at no extra cost: 1. The Permaculture Behavior Blueprint and Guidelines will get everything successfully and won’t forget a thing. 2. Also you get fifteen diagrams of permaculture gardens for a resource. 3. The SHTF Water supply report that gives you all the stuff you should know about storing, harvesting, filtering, and cleansing water supply, and also where to find standard tap water solutions in virtually any landscaping. 4. If you’re keen on canning, the Canning Ability document is going to explain how to make it happen to help you keep away from botulism poisoning and spoilage. 5. The Veggie Money claim will show you how to make money from your supplementary build and barter with it after having a problem. 6. The previous reward piece is maximum access to the Family unit Survival Plans, which happens to be Dan’s firstly survival course… The advantages and disadvantages The Benefits My Survival Farm Scam by Dan F. Sullivan Supplies Lots Of Advantages For starters, you do not be required to put money into substance fertilizer since you can use backyard garden spend, or simply animal throw away (horse manure), to make the soil balanced. You never really need to destroy your back setting up it up and maintaining it (if you happen to examine it to ordinary garden). Further, it offers various operates with the exception of cultivating meals and healing vegetables. It’s Made for Minimal Settings This is one of the preferred features about permaculture. You can use this approach to any location capacity. Should you have a compact room space, it helps you get the best from it. It merely requires a superb gardening pattern before you begin, to make sure every aspect can be used clearly. Dan Would seem Reputable To be obvious. Dan Sullivan is known as a pencil designation. Dan’s Romanian reputation is tough to pronounce, and that is why he planned try using a mention which is not difficult to say and remember. Mr. Sullivan is still a lively prepper since 2014, and he’s the proprietor and editor-in-key of the prepping and survival online site known as Survival Sullivan. If you desire to get a better idea of who he is, his prepping familiarity, together with the survival necessary skills he has, quite simply go look at his endorsed homepage at survivalsullivan.com They’re Reactive to Queries Like we usually do, we have contacted Dan F. Sullivan and his reinforce workforce to determine if they will certainly reply and in what way swiftly. The best thing is that individuals discovered from Dan gorgeous swift, and you can now begin to see the screenshot of his answer in this article. It’s considerably a calming thought that whenever we have queries or concerns, Dan or maybe a support services agent could there really be to assist us. There is A Two-Thirty day period Repayment Assurance This insure allows you in order to provide the My Survival Farm Discount school a go if you are not fairly happy to thing along with your really difficult-gained revenue. In case you have concerns or want to request for a total refund, just speak to their support service dept at get hold of@survivalsullivan.com. The Negatives It Won’t Develop Crops Instantaneous My Survival Farm scam will allow you to grow your give as many as 8-10 intervals about typical agricultural or growing plants options. Although, this tends to not make that happen in a few days except if of course you are intending to use some type of compound to increase the speed of the growth of vegetation. It’s Not Dust Low-budget The tutorials as well service fees at least $30 one more time we tested. Aside from the worth of the course, also you will want to consider the materials you are preparing to easily use in building your permaculture back garden. It is An Electronic Digital Path The My Survival Farm Program by Dan F. Sullivan most important tutorial and benefit stories have been in eBook formatting. You could possibly straightaway download these once paying off. Usually, everyone loves eBooks due to the fact they are helpful. Even so, you may be the type preferring old fashioned literature. For those who are, your only option is to printing and combine from your computer printer. Our Final thoughts We for me personally reckon that My Survival Farm cons may be valued at looking at. The simple truth is you could obtain 100 percent free specifics about this theme on the internet. But, the things we observed while you are undergoing permaculture videos online will be there are wide and varied possibilities of going about it. In due course, we gained confused. We feel keeping just one single guide is needed refrain from uncertainty and help you to start off permaculture horticulture. Of course, there are various negative aspects that you must give some thought to prior to putting your acquire. For example, it is advisable to be aware that establishing a permaculture backyard is an important mission, and you might need to have a further set of fingers just for this activity. Also, it will require time and patience by you. Entire, if you expect to cultivate plant life in just a day or two, when you never have the perseverance, or maybe you’re reluctant that will put in jobs, than the Dan F. Sullivan My Survival Farm Review guide may not be suitable for you. Conversely, should you wish to increase your acquire foodstuff organically but do not discover how to start up, if you are curious about permaculture horticulture, or maybe you only desire to learn from a professional survivalist and permaculture pros, My Survival Farm Pros and Cons by Dan F. Sullivan a great option so that you could contemplate. In any event, Dan Sullivan’s 60-event refund policy makes this reasonably effortless to investigate his Review of My Survival Farm with out taking any possibility. Good, that is it for My Survival Farm Review by ReviewsMagz. Hopefully you get this beneficial and want you have fun with your survival growing plants ??

[berthastover]

Marketing Persona vs UX Persona

As a marketer making a transition into user experience (UX), I had observed many interesting overlaps between the two disciplines as well as some divisive differences. While marketers and UX designers share a few tools in their toolboxes, clarifying the differences in their approaches can help resolve conflicts and reduce redundancies. After all, marketers and UX designers work towards the same goals for organizational success.

In this article, I attempt to walk you through how marketing and UX personas are used through a real-world example, so we can see the similarities and differences in detail.

 Marketing persona

During my agency days working on campaigns with big consumer brands, I have seen many marketing personas coming together from market research.

A marketing persona, or buyer persona, is a way to segment target market by common characteristics. It is used to guide media campaigns to target the right audience with the appropriate messaging.

Buyer personas usually comes from market research. Through a combination of market research surveys and focus groups, market research for personas typically include the following information:

 Demographic characteristics: such as age, gender, location, occupation , income, household information

Psychographic characteristics, such as values, preferences, attitudes, and brand affiliations

Media consumption habits: which media brands do they consume the most, how frequent do they consume media on what platform

Goals & challenges: your potential buyers’ goals related to your product/service, and their struggles with the current solution

How is a marketing persona used?

Demographic information turns a rough sketch into a real portrait. It helps to align organizational vision of the target market by giving target buyers a name, age, job title, etc. It also helps to segment primary, secondary and tertiary customer cohorts to further define marketing goals. In this way, your organizational resources will not be wasted on irrelevant groups.

Take Visme, an infographic and presentation software where I worked on customer segmentation for example. Through market research, we discovered that our primary target users are content producers working for non-for-profits who use engaging visuals for awareness and engagement.

The most important detail  here for a goal-oriented tool like Visme is target buyer’s role and organization type. Role and work-related goals help us investigate our target users’ pains and frustrations, so we can speak to potential customers in a way that deeply resonates with them. For the purpose of demonstration, let’s call our target persona “Amy”,  who is in her mid 30s working as a communications manager for local non-government-organization (NGO) that employs less than 20 people.

Once we’ve got the demographic information, you will want to get into your target buyers’ head with psychographic characteristics. This is when we get to know our target buyer – Amy – as a real person with distinct preferences and attitudes. What are Amy’s motivations to work as a communications manager? What does she want to achieve at her role? What is success to her?

Through customer interviews, we find out that Amy is passionate about her work because of she strongly support the philanthropic vision of her organization. Through her work, Amy feels that she is doing good for the society. Her main goal as a communication manager is to raise maximum awareness among the public and stakeholders. When she does it well, her organization receives public recognition and donors support, which is critical for sustaining organizational growth.

Goals are important to understand, and so are frustrations. Pain points are what connects your product vision with your customer needs. Through interviews, we found out that Amy struggles to communicate complex ideas across to the general public in a simple, engaging way. Since her NGO is tight on marketing budget, she doesn’t have the means to hire an agency for creative content . Furthermore, Amy is so swamped with daily tasks that she doesn’t have the time to learn coding to build interactive presentations or learn graphic design to deliver amazing infographics.

Now we have a very detailed portrait of Amy as a potential buyer of Visme as below. All the information here serves a guide on how to communicate with Amy with deep understanding. This is an important first step towards achieving the “fit” where your product offering matches the need gap of your target customers. With the right messaging, your product can address concerns and overcome objections from your target buyers.

 Marketing Persona for Visme based on user interview. Image created by Lucia Wang

 But how do we get the message to Amy? This is where media consumption habits come in handy. Through research on how Amy consumes information on what platforms, we can identify the right channels to get Amy’s attention. Since Amy frequently uses Google to search how to guides and articles, we identified content marketing as a main acquisition channels. Since Amy is also active on LinkedIn groups and design forums, we will raise product awareness through those channels too.

In short, a marketing or buyer persona is created to:

Define marketing goals internally

Segment target markets

Craft value proposition messaging

Achieve new customer buy-in

However as you can see from the output here, a marketing or buyer persona does NOT help:

Define what the product should be

What product features to include/prioritize

How the product will be used over time

 UX Persona 

If marketing persona is focused on the WHO, a UX persona is more about the HOW. A UX persona, or design persona, can include all the information in buyer persona, but with additional emphasis on the task-oriented user behavior. What a UX persona wants to uncover is all the steps a target user will take to go from point A to point B. This method of research will generate additional output such as:

Task Analysis: a step-by-step account of exactly how the user accomplishes a task

Affinity Diagrams: an analytical tool to group similar information and reveal patterns

Empathy Map: all kinds of sensory input a user will receive to affect his/her behaviour

Storyboard: a cohesive narrative that describes the problem in visual format

A buyer persona paints customer segments in somewhat broad brushstrokes – it gives us a bird’s eye view of target buyers as cohorts . A UX persona, however, zooms in on the micro-moments of scenarios where one particular user tries to accomplish a certain goal. Built on real research, UX personas oftentimes include real quotes from target users, and presents the finding as “a day in the life of XX” scenario.

 An example of UX persona detailing user goals and close look at a day in his life. Image source: Smashingmagazine.com

 Many UX experts have described UX persona in detail such as in Kim Goodwin’s seminal book “Designing for the Digital Age”. The common consensus on the UX persona is that it is a tool to frame a design problem so that it leads to defining a product solution.

 How is a UX Persona Used?

When working with clients or large organizations, UX Personas become the go-to internal reference every time the team discuss product vision. Clients and product owners often forget that he/she is not the user. UX persona gives everyone on the product team an objective, realistic look at what the problem really is.

“You are not your user” sounds intuitive enough but is usually forgotten during the design/development process. Image source.

Alan Cooper, pioneer of user-centric software design, recounts how he uses personas as a foundation for all product designs:

“We print out copies of the cast of characters and distribute it at every meeting… Until the user is precisely defined, the programmer can always imagine that he is the user.”

Using persona as the foundation, the design team can then start using persona in all areas of design. A few ways to use personas in design include:

Generate product requirements document. Product Requirements Document (PRD) would be the single most important document for not just design team but marketing and engineering as well. PRD describes product purpose, define functionalities, prioritizes features and set a rough release date for each feature. An example of PRD by ProductHunt can be viewed here. Using Persona to guide PRD makes sure that the product remains true to its purpose.

Create Information architecture. Persona can be used to understand the mental model of your users, and create the site architecture according to how your user classify information and navigate content.

Develop Style guide: Person will tell you a lot about what colors to will appeal to your target users, what fonts will be the most eligible to them, what kind of imagery will win over their hearts. Persona helps to make sure the branding and style appeals to your target users.

Create content strategy: When I talk about content, it’s not limited to marketing content – product copies, instructional texts, help guides, e-newsletter etc. When feeling undecided about what voice and tone to use for content, consult with your Persona. Persona can also tell you what type of content your users will need.  A great example for using Persona in content is Atlassian’s content styleguide.

In short, UX or Design Persona is created to:

Define what the product is

Frame realistic use cases

Define how the interface behaves

Refine product look & feel

But UX Persona cannot help with things such as:

Develop user acquisition strategies

Form external communication guidelines

Create advertising assets

 Conclusion

Despite the differences, let’s not forget that both marketing persona and UX persona ultimately aim at the same thing: user growth, sustained engagement, long term ROI.

In this age of vertical specialization, even small teams tend to work in silos. It’s a real shame for growth because there is so much marketing and UX can learn from each other. Cross-team understanding is the first step towards removing unnecessary friction and wasted energy.

I personally believe real growth comes from a holistic approach that integrates both marketing and UX into one seamless experience. The consumer journey starts from the moment when a consumer realizes his/her problem, and it doesn’t end at buying the product.

Hopefully, this article will help clarify some common misconceptions so that marketing, design and engineering team can pull their strengths together towards long-term growth.

Related posts

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How to Create the Perfect Thank You Page: An Epic Guide

The post Marketing Persona vs UX Persona appeared first on GetResponse Blog - Online Marketing Tips.

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How We Trick Ourselves Into Believing the Wrong Causes of Any Problems

Do you cringe every time Mercury is in retrograde? Do you avoid leaving your house during the full moon because you find that people act differently during that time? There are so many unpredictable aspects of life that it is tempting to find ways to make sense of our world by making false connections.

We trick ourselves into making connections.

Most people are convinced that the full moon makes other behave strangely even though there is no scientific evidence to support that claim.[1] This belief in the connection between two unrelated things is called an illusory-correlation bias.[2]

We’re all kidding ourselves when we don’t understand the difference between correlation and causation.

Causal analysis can help you determine whether two variables have a relationship base on correlation or causation. Through causal analysis you can identify problems, determine their causes, and develop a plan to correct the situation.[3] When two variables correlate, it means that they have a linear relationship.[4]When you wore your lucky shoes and nailed that job interview, there is a linear relationship between the shoes and the interview.

Causation is the extent to which the two variables depend on one another. When the sun beats down on pavement, we know that the pavement will be warm. The sun causes the temperature of the surface to rise. In this case the sun and the heat of the pavement have both a correlative and a causative relationship. Your lucky shoes didn’t cause you to ace your interview, though.

How can we apply causal analysis to our lives?

Wouldn’t it be nice to understand which variables really led to your success instead of giving all your power to your lucky shoes? Identifying root causes not only enables us to prevent problems, but it can help us understand the great things we are already doing. Maybe on the day of your interview, you were confident, prepared, and passionate. Give yourself some credit!

To use a practical example, causal analysis could show a restaurant manager that the full moon isn’t what led to the rush of uncooperative customers at dinnertime. During that shift, the most inexperienced employees were scheduled to work together on the busiest night of the week, which happened to coincide with the full moon. The food came out slowly, which frustrated the servers. The customers were unhappy because they had to wait, and their dinner got cold in the process.

If the restaurant manager continued to blame the moon, he or she would miss an opportunity to prevent another disastrous night. In the future, the manager might choose to schedule more experienced and faster workers during the busiest nights of the week.

Bust through your illusions with a causal layered analysis iceberg

You can imagine your problem as an iceberg.[5] Perceptions about a problem, known as the litany, are the tip of the iceberg. Your belief that your day is ruined because a black cat crossed your path is part of the litany. Just below the surface, our iceberg supports the litany through social causes. Maybe you connect black cats to the worst day that you ever had.

Causal layered analysis doesn’t stop there, though, and our goal is to break apart the illusory-correlation bias between black cats and the quality of your day. Perhaps in your culture, black cats are bad luck. Worldview is the third layer of your iceberg, and it lends support to social beliefs and the litany.

The lowest level of the iceberg is comprised of myths and metaphors. These are old beliefs that underpin worldviews. Many people think that black cats are bad luck because of a long-standing association between cats and witchcraft and the historical belief that cats smothered children while they slept [6]

When you recognize that you have constructed a false narrative, you can work to overcome it. A black cat may have crossed your path as you received bad news, and since it was such a terrible day, your mind easily associated the cat with something negative. This negative association was reinforced by culture, worldview, and myths. The cat has a correlative relationship to the bad day, but it didn’t cause it.

How can we avoid falling into the illusory-correlation trap?

Follow these steps to get to the core of a problem and verify causal relationships:[7]

Identify the problem. What are you trying to change about your business or your life?

Compile data related to the problem. Include quantitative and qualitative data. You may have access to sales numbers or historical data. In other cases, your information may be anecdotal. All of it can play a role in getting to the root of a problem.

Name potential causes for the problem. Be generous and note anything that comes to mind.

Determine what you can do to correct the issue. What are the actionable measures that you can take to change your situation? If you named a variable that correlates to the issue but doesn’t cause it, then changing it isn’t going to have much effect. Real causative factors can have dramatic impacts when you change them.

Identify sustainable solutions. While it may be tempting to attack a problem head-on, making changes strategically may work better. If all of your employees perform poorly, you could fire them. Chances are, this is going to have negative outcomes. Could you afford to retrain them instead?

Engage in praxis. Most complex problems are a perfect storm of variables. Hold yourself accountable for making sure that your solutions work. Taking time to reflect and adjust your strategy gives you flexibility and enables you adapt to new variables as they arise.

It may also be helpful to use a Fishbone or Ishikawa Diagram to understand cause and effect relationships.[8] The diagram makes it easier to visualize the first three steps of causal analysis.

In the above example, you can see the the problem is bad coffee. The categories that affect coffee quality (procedures, people, equipment, and material) are the ribs of the fish in the diagram. The arrows coming from each category name variables that could contribute to poor outcomes. After you’ve mapped potential causes, it will be up to you and your team to complete the causal analysis by developing, acting on, and evaluating your action plan .

What’s the easiest way to identify causal relationships?

The quickest way to find a solution is to view your problem objectively.

When we muddle our vision with cultural baggage and superstition, we lose sight of variables that do have a causal relationship to the issue. If you catch yourself falling victim to illusory-correlation bias, know that you are not alone. Many of us have blamed a red herring at least once in our lives. The trick is to use clear causal analysis so that we can disrupt negative patterns and discover better solutions.

Featured photo credit: Stocksnap via stocksnap.io

Reference

[1]^The Washington Post: Dear Science: Does a full moon really change human behavior?[2]^Lifehacker: The Illusory Correlation: A common mental error that leads to misguided thinking[3]^Quality Assurance: Causal Analysis Guidelines[4]^Wikipedia: Correlation and dependence[5]^Infinite Futures: Causal Layered Analysis (CLA)- brief introduction[6]^Wonderopolis: Do black cats bring bad luck?[7]^Bright Hub Project Management: Overview of Root Cause Analysis Tecnhiques[8]^ASQ: Fishbone (Ishikawa) Diagram

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How We Trick Ourselves Into Believing the Wrong Causes of Any Problems

Do you cringe every time Mercury is in retrograde? Do you avoid leaving your house during the full moon because you find that people act differently during that time? There are so many unpredictable aspects of life that it is tempting to find ways to make sense of our world by making false connections.

We trick ourselves into making connections.

Most people are convinced that the full moon makes other behave strangely even though there is no scientific evidence to support that claim.[1] This belief in the connection between two unrelated things is called an illusory-correlation bias.[2]

We’re all kidding ourselves when we don’t understand the difference between correlation and causation.

Causal analysis can help you determine whether two variables have a relationship base on correlation or causation. Through causal analysis you can identify problems, determine their causes, and develop a plan to correct the situation.[3] When two variables correlate, it means that they have a linear relationship.[4]When you wore your lucky shoes and nailed that job interview, there is a linear relationship between the shoes and the interview.

Causation is the extent to which the two variables depend on one another. When the sun beats down on pavement, we know that the pavement will be warm. The sun causes the temperature of the surface to rise. In this case the sun and the heat of the pavement have both a correlative and a causative relationship. Your lucky shoes didn’t cause you to ace your interview, though.

How can we apply causal analysis to our lives?

Wouldn’t it be nice to understand which variables really led to your success instead of giving all your power to your lucky shoes? Identifying root causes not only enables us to prevent problems, but it can help us understand the great things we are already doing. Maybe on the day of your interview, you were confident, prepared, and passionate. Give yourself some credit!

To use a practical example, causal analysis could show a restaurant manager that the full moon isn’t what led to the rush of uncooperative customers at dinnertime. During that shift, the most inexperienced employees were scheduled to work together on the busiest night of the week, which happened to coincide with the full moon. The food came out slowly, which frustrated the servers. The customers were unhappy because they had to wait, and their dinner got cold in the process.

If the restaurant manager continued to blame the moon, he or she would miss an opportunity to prevent another disastrous night. In the future, the manager might choose to schedule more experienced and faster workers during the busiest nights of the week.

Bust through your illusions with a causal layered analysis iceberg

You can imagine your problem as an iceberg.[5] Perceptions about a problem, known as the litany, are the tip of the iceberg. Your belief that your day is ruined because a black cat crossed your path is part of the litany. Just below the surface, our iceberg supports the litany through social causes. Maybe you connect black cats to the worst day that you ever had.

Causal layered analysis doesn’t stop there, though, and our goal is to break apart the illusory-correlation bias between black cats and the quality of your day. Perhaps in your culture, black cats are bad luck. Worldview is the third layer of your iceberg, and it lends support to social beliefs and the litany.

The lowest level of the iceberg is comprised of myths and metaphors. These are old beliefs that underpin worldviews. Many people think that black cats are bad luck because of a long-standing association between cats and witchcraft and the historical belief that cats smothered children while they slept [6]

When you recognize that you have constructed a false narrative, you can work to overcome it. A black cat may have crossed your path as you received bad news, and since it was such a terrible day, your mind easily associated the cat with something negative. This negative association was reinforced by culture, worldview, and myths. The cat has a correlative relationship to the bad day, but it didn’t cause it.

How can we avoid falling into the illusory-correlation trap?

Follow these steps to get to the core of a problem and verify causal relationships:[7]

Identify the problem. What are you trying to change about your business or your life?

Compile data related to the problem. Include quantitative and qualitative data. You may have access to sales numbers or historical data. In other cases, your information may be anecdotal. All of it can play a role in getting to the root of a problem.

Name potential causes for the problem. Be generous and note anything that comes to mind.

Determine what you can do to correct the issue. What are the actionable measures that you can take to change your situation? If you named a variable that correlates to the issue but doesn’t cause it, then changing it isn’t going to have much effect. Real causative factors can have dramatic impacts when you change them.

Identify sustainable solutions. While it may be tempting to attack a problem head-on, making changes strategically may work better. If all of your employees perform poorly, you could fire them. Chances are, this is going to have negative outcomes. Could you afford to retrain them instead?

Engage in praxis. Most complex problems are a perfect storm of variables. Hold yourself accountable for making sure that your solutions work. Taking time to reflect and adjust your strategy gives you flexibility and enables you adapt to new variables as they arise.

It may also be helpful to use a Fishbone or Ishikawa Diagram to understand cause and effect relationships.[8] The diagram makes it easier to visualize the first three steps of causal analysis.

In the above example, you can see the the problem is bad coffee. The categories that affect coffee quality (procedures, people, equipment, and material) are the ribs of the fish in the diagram. The arrows coming from each category name variables that could contribute to poor outcomes. After you’ve mapped potential causes, it will be up to you and your team to complete the causal analysis by developing, acting on, and evaluating your action plan .

What’s the easiest way to identify causal relationships?

The quickest way to find a solution is to view your problem objectively.

When we muddle our vision with cultural baggage and superstition, we lose sight of variables that do have a causal relationship to the issue. If you catch yourself falling victim to illusory-correlation bias, know that you are not alone. Many of us have blamed a red herring at least once in our lives. The trick is to use clear causal analysis so that we can disrupt negative patterns and discover better solutions.

Featured photo credit: Stocksnap via stocksnap.io

Reference

[1]^The Washington Post: Dear Science: Does a full moon really change human behavior?[2]^Lifehacker: The Illusory Correlation: A common mental error that leads to misguided thinking[3]^Quality Assurance: Causal Analysis Guidelines[4]^Wikipedia: Correlation and dependence[5]^Infinite Futures: Causal Layered Analysis (CLA)- brief introduction[6]^Wonderopolis: Do black cats bring bad luck?[7]^Bright Hub Project Management: Overview of Root Cause Analysis Tecnhiques[8]^ASQ: Fishbone (Ishikawa) Diagram

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