Bright, blue, air, and crime

Bright, bright

Back in January, we talked about Seth Rogen’s growing ceramics obsession and how his love of bright, harmonious colors might relate to sensation-seeking, mood, and personality. 

Last month, Seth went from ceramics maker to ceramics designer with a line of little vases and ashtrays for his pot company, Houseplant. 

For a guy who has spoken publicly about wanting to bring “unnatural colors” to ceramics rather than the typical earth tones, and who continues to make bright, bright ceramics on his own, the Houseplant line is surprisingly… earth-toned.

Image source. Earth-toned ceramics designed by Seth Rogen.

Since no one has asked (perhaps because no one has thought about Seth Rogen’s ceramics enough to ask), I will: What gives?

Does Seth believe his potential customers are thrill-avoiders who like muted colors rather than thrill-seekers like him? Is he responding to the general worldwide mood, which is decidedly more earth-toned than bright right now? Or is he trying to fit the Instagram ceramic influencer mold rather than follow his own bright, wacky way?

Questions, questions.

Blue and true

Staying on the topic of color, a Twitter hot take on the color blue recently got some attention. In a series of tweets, Andrew Wilkinson, one of the co-founders of the user interface design company Metalab, argued that the reason Coinbase, the extremely popular cryptocurrency exchange, is now the market leader and worth over $100 billion is because of the color blue. He followed up to explain that blue and other choices (including, modestly, his company’s good design work) made Coinbase look trustworthy. 

Image source. Hot take on blue.

He got hella sassed in the replies, because yes, of course, color isn’t all-powerful and lots of other factors contributed to the success of Coinbase.

Still, many people agreed with the broader point. Blue’s good.

As we’ve explored previously, blue logos and websites can build trust. Trust is especially important for products that involve some degree of risk, like financial services. All else being equal, companies that use a color linked with trust (blue and green for financial services) should leave a more positive impression.

And as for Coinbase, they’re about to go public with an easy-to-pronounce ticker (COIN) and haven’t changed their signature color.

Image source. Shades of blue and trust statements on the Coinbase website. 

Fresh air 

Something that has changed is what couples getting married in the pandemic are asking for as wedding presents. Gifts that can improve the near-constant experience of staying at home, like outdoor and hobby gear are popular. International trips are out and… air purifiers are in. The popular wedding registry site, “Zola, has seen spikes in air purifiers, up 43 percent.” 

I’m here for this. 

More generally, air purifiers sales have picked up over the past year, and the air purifier industry is predicted to grow at an average annual growth rate of 10% over the next decade.

A simple way to find out if a home trend is mainstream to check the (virtual) shelves at Ikea. And the answer to that is now “yes”. Ikea has recently released the Förnuftig air purifier, in white and black, at the very Ikea price of $55 USD (vs. hundreds of dollars for air purifiers on the market.). Now, this purifier doesn’t have a HEPA (High Efficiency Particulate Air) filter, normally something I’d look for, and I would love to see some external testing and validation to see how well this thing actually works.

Image source. The Förnuftig air purifier.

But still, I think this is a fantastic development! No one can bring new home items to as many people as quickly as Ikea. Smart lighting and speakers used to be expensive, specialty items, too. And now both are entire category lines at Ikea.  

Tree terrors

The launch of the Förnuftig is well-timed to coincide with an annual environmental reign of terror that can get those purifiers humming: allergy season. The US-based tracker at Pollen.com has been showing a creep of red spreading up the North American landmass. Neighbours to the north here in Montréal are already starting to sniffle, too.

If you don’t have seasonal allergies, I’m happy for you. In addition to missing the sniffles and scratchy eyes, you’re also missing out on some, in non-technical terms, brain fog. Yes, indeed.

In the lab, studies find that people suffering from seasonal allergies have slower cognitive processing. Out in the world, allergies have consequences for task performance, like taking tests. For example, one study paired the test scores of more than 25 thousand Norwegian high school students taking exams with local pollen levels. The higher the local pollen levels, the lower the test scores.

In more unexpected effects, one possible upside of allergy season is slightly lower crime, especially violent crime. A study found that crime rates across U.S. cities are lower on days when local pollen counts are high, and that these declines are driven by declines in residential violence. Experiencing allergy symptoms might act as a “health shock” and lower the chance that people get violent.

VR crime

On the topic of crime, sometimes you come across a study so strange you’d love to find out what exactly led to the decisions made by the researchers. Most recently for me, that was a study on burglary. In VR.

Almost every detail is strange. The authors purportedly wanted to understand what drives intrusion decisions of burglars in the United States. More residential burglaries in the US occur in detached single-family houses than in other house types (presumably because it’s harder to go undetected in an apartment building). The goal of the study was to understand how burglars decide on intrusion paths (Do you jump over a fence? Or use a gate? Do you break into the side window or back door?) by modeling single-family houses in VR and asking people to explain their break-in plans.

After sharing prior evidence that the way experienced burglars vs. people without burglary expertise interact with spaces in a VR burglary context is different (experienced burglars are experts on the job), the researchers decided to run the study with Korean men in their 20s-40s, all current students, office workers, or professionals. Justifying the choice, the authors explained the participants were supposed to act as proxies for inexperienced first-time burglars (everyone has to start somewhere). However, at the start of the task, participants were instructed to role-play “a motivated burglar that has various criminal experiences”. Hm? Nothing’s really adding up.

In any case, even novice VR burglars have some sense of what makes a good intrusion path into a home. The easier it is to enter the space, the better. And it’s not good to choose a path where you can be spotted breaking in from the street or by neighbors. This broadly matches real-world patterns of burglary, where ground-floor rear-windows and back doors are the preferred route of entry.

A possible next step: a video game replication.