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**Rachel Plotnick:** Yeah. Well, that's the placebo button. We all want to feel like we're in control, and there's that that quality of agency that buttons have, like "I control this machine, not the other way around." So when you take away the buttons, people get really upset. |
**Jerod Santo:** Oh, yeah. What about -- you said placebo buttons... That's a real thing in elevators, right? Like, the Close Door button... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** It does not work. |
**Jerod Santo:** Did you did you do research on this? Did you confirm that it's merely there for us to think we're in control? |
**Rachel Plotnick:** The majority of the time the elevator is controlled by a computer that has a timer, and no matter what you do, it's going to go at that particular time. So most of the time it's not going to do very much of anything. Same thing with the crosswalk button. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I was going to say... |
**Rachel Plotnick:** Yup, same thing with the crosswalk buttons. Yup, yup. |
**Jerod Santo:** Oh... I hit those profusely. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I refuse... They don't work anymore. I know they don't work. \[laughter\] |
**Rachel Plotnick:** But people get angry when you take those away, too. They just want to press that button. |
**Jerod Santo:** They just do. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Let me feel like I've let you know I'm here... I'm here now... Give me the timer. At least start the timer, right? That might do it. It may not be like "Hey, crosswalk now." It's more like "Someone's here. Let's begin the process to allow someone to walk." Yes... Or just jaywalk. Don't do that. |
**Jerod Santo:** \[37:43\] So this is related. It's not a button, but it's the area of lore. How about streetlights and cars? There have been stories of specific things you can do at particular streetlights... For instance - and I've been told these things. I've never confirmed any, but I've tried them all. Like flashi... |
**Rachel Plotnick:** I wish I knew... Maybe Adam knows. But I do think that gets at this issue of like we could make most things automatic now if we want to. We don't really need to push buttons to do anything. Everything can be sensors and automatic, timer this, timer that... We could live in a world where everything'... |
**Jerod Santo:** Adam, do you know about that? |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I don't know about the flashing the brights, but I do know there's a sensor in some cases; not in all cases, but I can concur on this one, because we recently got a light leaving my neighborhood for which there was not a light before; there was a Stop sign. But there was also a lot of wrecks. And so... |
So I back up, and I wait. And the red light is still red. And I see the opposing sides, I can see that the lights are doing their thing. Still green. They go to yellow. They go to red. Here I'm still red. Now we're all red. Where is my green light? |
**Rachel Plotnick:** Brutal. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** So what do I do? |
**Jerod Santo:** You run it. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I waited 10 minutes, because I was like "Okay, I'm not going to get pulled over..." |
**Jerod Santo:** \[laughs\] |
**Rachel Plotnick:** 10 minutes?! |
**Jerod Santo:** You're even more compliant than most people on Earth, I think. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Well, I was like "Well, maybe there's a cop nearby here, and this is a trap." |
**Jerod Santo:** Have you ever sat there and you're just like "I should just run it" and then you realize no one's there, and you're like "I still haven't run it. I need to run it." |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah... I wasted 10 minutes of my life. That's the story. I wasted 10 minutes of my life thinking there was a sensor, and there was no sensor. So I don't know, is the long story short. I don't know if there's sensors or not. I know I tried to see if there was one... |
**Jerod Santo:** \[laughs\] I thought you were gonna confirm. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** ...and I was waiting, and it did not happen, and I ended up running the red light. |
**Jerod Santo:** Good story. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Don't listen to this, cops. It's not true. I'm just -- this is just fodder for a podcast. |
**Jerod Santo:** What's funny is these - what I call them as wives tales, because I don't know if they're true or not, but I've used them my entire life... You know, it's kind of like pushing the crosswalk. Like, "Well, it might help." However, now I'm getting 16-year-old children and I'm teaching them the drive, and I... |
**Rachel Plotnick:** Well, I think because we don't know how so many machines work, and they are so impenetrable to us, we have to come up with this folklore and all this local wisdom... Because we can't really see how the machine works, or what makes it do what it does, and so it leads people to do a lot of wild and c... |
**Jerod Santo:** Ain't that right. Just trying to like come up with a unified theory of how things work. You're like "Here's how I think this is working, but it's a black box, I have no idea how it's working." Oh man, software developers understand that... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** \[42:06\] Have you considered as part of your research in your book to create a decision tree of when to make it a button and when to make it "Okay, this could be either/or kind of thing"? Is there any guidance you have, or expertise based upon your research that says "I can go look at this and as I... |
**Rachel Plotnick:** That's a great question. I think a lot of people are interested in that and wanting some kind of standardization or some kind of system for deciding when to put these things in which situations... And I'm not a UX expert and I'm not an HCI expert, so I don't do much in the way of kind of saying "Th... |
I've also talked to people about things like defibrillators, and CT scanners, and X-rays - you know, medical situations when you have to push a button... And it seems like any time life or death is involved, or people's well-being is at stake, probably a touchscreen is not going to be the right way to go, because it's ... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah, for sure. It's probably hard to create a decision tree like that for all buttons, in all scenarios, for all things, because you're right there -- back to the Cybertruck, for example... And maybe this is the case for most Tesla cars and vehicles, I'm not really sure. In my experience, I haven't... |
**Jerod Santo:** Yeah. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** The shifter is in the screen. |
**Rachel Plotnick:** Yeah... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I'm like "Okay, I've gotta --" I think I had to slide my finger to park, or to drive... It was like some sort of abnormal, not the way of every driven car I've ever driven in my life... And so I'm like "What? How is that there?" And I'm sure once you've become accustomed to it it's okay, but imagine... |
**Jerod Santo:** That would be a funny little sketch. |
**Rachel Plotnick:** That would be really funny. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Or when you take your foot off the accelerator, it's going to start braking on you. Like, that's not what's supposed to happen. Don't start braking when I accidentally just remove my foot. You have to always have your foot on the accelerator. It's so strange. |
**Rachel Plotnick:** There's a decision tree for you. It's just "Could James Bond do it or not?" And then, you know... |
**Jerod Santo:** Right. If James Bond would die, then we need physical buttons here, man. |
**Rachel Plotnick:** Yeah, that's it. You just figured it out. |
**Jerod Santo:** If he can figure it out, you're good to go. Yeah, I think medical is an interesting one... I think you're on point with -- like, if it's dangerous, if there's large consequences, you need not just physical buttons, but going back to Adam's reference of like the nuclear buttons... Underneath a piece of ... |
**Rachel Plotnick:** Yeah, it's almost like it has to be made more complex in certain situations and simpler in other ones. Like the defibrillator case, a lot of people -- these are automatic defibrillators that are installed in places, AEDs like in shopping malls, or in a city, so that you could administer first aid i... |
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