The laptops are arranged in neat rows, seemingly endless black rectangles each glowing with bright blue screens. I point out to my daughter what the numbers on the little signs next to computer mean. I show her how to evaluate the features – Longer battery life, more RAM, bigger hard drive, larger screen, total weight. With each model comes a trade off, and after a few minutes I can tell she is getting confused. “Look, decide what features are most important to you, and then choose based on that,†I tell her. She nods, then proceeds to look at the back of each computer, and to feel the touch pad on each one.
My daughter finally stops at a mid-priced Sony and nods. Good brand, good choice, I think to myself. I glance at the features – seems like she picked one with a good balance of performance and portability. I tell her she’s a smart kid, figuring out what is best from amongst all those feature trade-offs. “It wasn’t that,†she tells me. “It’s a pretty silver color, not boring like all those others. And I liked the way the keypad felt.†Continue reading “How shoppers make choices”
The Lab is proud to announce our partnership with the 
Email marketers are in a dire situation. Many of them don’t know it yet. One of the major activities for smartphone users involves checking email. For marketing emails, while the current best practices dictate formatting emails to support both text-only and HTML email clients, the HTML versions don’t scale well to smaller devices. This is a big problem.
For those who know Lab Director Lori Schwartz, it’s not a shock that she’d bring her love of emerging media home with her. Lori’s been an evangelist of advanced TV and video, interactive content, and industry partnerships for as long as anyone would listen.
Column originally featured on 