Feedback is crucial to the success of systems - by use of sensory cues, designers remove user uncertainty, informing them that their actions are understood by the system and correct for their task.

As with all good things, however, there are people who use feedback for evil. Consider the poker/slot/fruit machine, designed to separate fools and their money. I've tried one machine and found it to provide inconsistent feedback, greatly rewarding modest windfalls with dazzling sound and light displays and allowing losses to go all but unnoticed. The feedback I despised the most was the machine giving 'you've won' feedback when someone bet a dollar and 'won' fifty cents (ie. they lost fifty cents). Evil.

Another obvious contender to win evil feedback awards are the cigarette manufacturers who, in adding nicotine, allow their cigarettes to give new users a mild high - feedback that the product is beneficial to you - when the reality is quite different.

Mainstream organisations often use feedback in ways which are cunning, if not necessarily evil. Consider, for instance, the use of MSG (Monosodium Glutamate) in foods. In Malcolm Gladwell's typically insightful article, 'The Ketchup Conundrum', he points out that MSG has a taste which is pure umami, the fifth fundamental taste of the human palate and a marker of protein in foods. Manufacturers who add MSG to their foods may therefore be providing their food products with feedback that implies wholesomeness - protein - where this may not be the case.

Don't be tempted to join these companies in provide misleading feedback in your products. Take a long term view of business, building your brand by frequently delivering on and exceeding customer expectations. This calls you to a higher standard of truth and transaperency, now valued by increasingly aware consumers.

My favourite truthful & transparent product of late is Another Bloody Water. Just reading the naked truth on the label or website is enough to make you smile, a powerful use of a Liking trigger that raises this product from a commodity to something remarkable.

Do your products, packaging & promotions provide accurate feedback, reflecting the utility that users can expect to receive from you?

How can you use truth & transparency to increase the appeal of your products?

Wandering around a motor show last year, only two cars really interested me - the Ferrari F430:

and the Mitsubishi Evo X:

This troubled me - that in spite of a plethora of choice and my significant interest in cars, all but two left me cold. I sat looking at the Evo X and pondered until I came up with a formula of sorts for desirability in design:

Desirability = (clarity of design purpose) x
(commitment to that purpose) x
? (an aesthetic factor)

In other words, I'm wondering whether the Evo X, the F430 and other products are desirable because:

• they're designed with a very clear purpose in mind (to not be all things to all people),
• the manufacturer totally commits their products to that purpose, and
• the designers made them beautiful as befits their purpose.

This, then, may be a useful framework for considering the desirability of your products:

• How clear are we on the design purpose of our products?
• How committed are we to delivering on that purpose?
• Is there a way to increase the aesthetic value of our products?

Or in summary form:

• Are our products highly desirable to a niche market (or equally undesirable to everyone)?

Finally, I commend the dieline blog to you as inspiration for extraordinary product and packaging design. It contains countless examples of commodities that have been elevated to objects of desire through clear, committed and beautiful design.

Seth pointed us to The Technium recently, and there's a wealth of considered opinion there. Believing the impossible has struck me deeply - a piece on how Kevin Kelly had thought Wikipedia would never work but, despite the flaws of human nature, it keeps getting better. The following comment in particular has kept me thinking:

It turns out that with the right tools it is easier to restore damage text (the revert function on Wikipedia) than to create damage text (vandalism) in the first place, and so the good enough article prospers and continues.

Most solutions seeking to prevent malicious behaviour do so by limiting opportunity - passwords, permissions, encryption, etc in the connected world and locks, alarms, security guards, police & incarceration in the physical world - and people with motive invariably find a way around them.

Wikipedia has instead incorporated a simple, single function that has all but eliminated the motive ('to have my vandalism seen by others'), allowing them to make their content freely editable by an anonymous public. This may look obvious in retrospect - good solutions invariably do - but it's a remarkable achievement.

Richard St. John gave a compelling, four minute version of his 'Secrets of success' course at TED in 2005:

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Richard's eight points, found by surveying 500 successful people are:

• Passion (be driven by passion, for love not money - the money follows),
• Work (it's all hard work but successful people have fun),
• Good (become very good at what you do),
• Focus (focus on one thing),
• Push (push yourself, push through self-doubt),
• Serve (serve others, provide others with value),
• Ideas (listen, observe, be curious, ask questions, problem solve, make connections), and
• Persist (through failure, through CRAP)

Of course, one needs to beware of survivor bias - the human tendency to focus on successful people and ignore the unsuccessful. This may mean that many people follow the advice or path of the successful but fail, unnoticed by observers, preventing us from accurately assessing the risks inherent in following in the footsteps of the successful.

One thing I do know, however, is that no one became successful by being ignorant of advice, risk averse or lazy. Which brings me to the eloquent wisdom of Ted Roosevelt:

"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in that grey twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat."

I couldn't agree more.

?I recommend Freemind, mind-mapping freeware, to everyone. I use it for:

• brainstorming - alone, in a team or with clients,
• planning - business, documents, presentations, this blog, and
• completeness - strategy & problem-solving.

Of the three uses - brainstorming, planning and completeness, it's the latter that's probably most overlooked in a given situation. I use a powerful technique that Dave Hunt of Straterjee taught me a couple of years ago.

The idea is to take a problem and break it down in stages, creating a complete list of possibilities at each level. If, for instance, your problem/challenge is to generate a higher profit, there are typically only two broad possibilities - to increase your revenue or lower your costs - so you enter this in Freemind:

Then you look at all the ways to increase revenue - more sales, higher price, etc. Following that you look at all the ways to generate more sales - more customers, more sales per customer, etc.:

As a non-linear thinker I jump between levels without necessarily completing any one level first, with FreeMind allowing me to move or regroup ideas as necessary. I don't stop mapping until I have a complete view of the problem, down to the Nth degree - as far as it needs to be taken to assess my problem. I finish with a review discussion with one or more peers to see what I've missed.

If you do all of the above, you'll have a complete view of your problem - the good news is that the answers to your problem are definitely on the page. Then you can assess which solutions are the most powerful or suitable and prioritise to determine your tactics and strategy going forward.

Why Freemind? It allows me to type thoughts as quickly as I think them, then easily reorder, highlight, change or regroup them once they're written down. You can then export your files to PDF, various web formats or as an image. You can even copy and paste the nodes into MS Word to make headings for your document. Even better, it's free and being Java it works on both PC and Mac.

To get the most of the software and work quickly when brainstorming you'll need to learn some shortcuts, particularly:

[insert] to add a child node
[enter] to enter a sibling node (below)
[shift+enter] for a previous sibling node (above)
[F5] for a bright red node
[F1] for the default node style
[Alt]+[PgUp] to collapse a node
[Alt]+[PgDn] to expand a node

Try it - you'll love it (or your money back).

You can't change the world if you can't communicate your vision for change. Pay attention to Garr Reynold's advice on the Presentation Zen blog and you'll learn how to create simple, powerful presentations.

The first post of Garr's that I saw was Gates, Jobs, & the Zen aesthetic and from there I was hooked. I expect you will be too.

Jessica Hagy draws simple diagrams that powerfully illustrate aspects of our careers, hopes and dreams on indexed cards. Her this is indexed blog is updated daily and a collection has been published at ChangeThis. Five minutes of your time well spent.

Wanting to use Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song in the movie School Of Rock, director Richard Linklater cunningly asked Jack Black to beg them:

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As discussed in Influence - The psychology of persuasion, Jack used three of the six weapons of influence to greatly enhance his chance of success:

Liking - Jack used this in spades with both humour and genuine respect,

Reciprocation - in the sense that they went to so much trouble - going to some trouble (in allowing them to use the song) is to be reciprocated, and

Social Proof - 1,000 people screaming - it's not just Jack who wants this, it's everyone in the theatre.

Liking is my favourite weapon of influence. Not only am I more likely to get what I need, the person I'm dealing with is more likely to enjoy their day. It's based on mutuality, the bedrock of long-term business.