Why I Love Mint.com

I’ve been using Mint.com for a couple of years now, and it has become an essential part of my life. Its ability to track my spending, income, savings, investments, and more in one tidy little place has really made my life easier.

This tax season, Mint has proven invaluable for organizing and sorting my deductible expenses. For me, that’s the most painful part of the tax paying grind, and Mint takes a lot of that pain away. And less pain equals more awesomeness.

For new users, though, I think Mint can seem a little daunting. “Mint.com in a Nutshell” is designed to give a broad, and welcoming, overview of the service. I hope it helps people and brings them to Mint.com. The video was truly a labor of love.

Watch it now.

Welcome to the Improved NutIntuit Site

The original site got NutIntuit off the ground, but it’s taken flight, and it was time for a new launch pad.

So, here you have it; a new year and a fresh start with a new Web site. The new site is designed to put all of our Nutshells in the spotlight. It also offers more flexibility for categorization, display, and sharing of videos that just wasn’t possible with the old site. In a nutshell, it’s a platform for future growth in areas we’re really excited about.

Most importantly, the new face of NutIntuit tells the NutIntuit and funderstanding stories better; who we are, what we do, what we believe in. You know, all that stuff that makes a brand, as they say in business meetings.

Welcome to 2010. It’s gonna be nutty, for sure.

NetSafe in a Nutshell: Videos 1-5 Complete

NutIntuit Studio’s project with KUEN public television is off to a great start with the release of the first five videos in a 15-video series on Internet safety for kids. You can learn about each video in more detail, as well as download transcripts for each one, here.

Three Audiences, Three Kinds of Online Video

I happened upon this great article by Daniel Sevitt at ReelSEO.com and just had to share it. It’s a great overview of three kinds of online videos — Viral, Conversion, and Educational — as well as the purposes and merits of each. I plan to use it to help clients figure out where and how they want to target their videos.

Image credit: ReelSEO.com

NutIntuit Studio: Why We Do What We Do

As NutIntuit continues to grow, and client inquiries continue to mount with each passing week, I’ve put a lot of thought about what my goals are with the studio. Here they are:

1. Remain small. I simply can’t see NutIntuit as a larger entity. Forget it. Part of what makes Nutshells special is their uniquely crafted quality, and that implies an artisanal scale. If someone can tell me how a team of 5-10 contractors — project managers, writers, illustrators, motion graphics artists — can deliver a high quality and hand crafted production that remains unique and special by the time it squirts out of your project management database, I’m all ears.

I like IKEA furniture. It looks nice, but it looks like what everyone else has, and it’s designed to last a couple of years at most. An IKEA dresser isn’t imbued with the craftsmanship of the dresser my grandfather made for me 20 years ago. That dresser has staying power, and emotional impact.

You won’t see NutIntuit Studio turn into a widget factory.

2. Remain weird. Every client that approaches NutIntuit appreciates the uniqueness of Nutshells. Weirdness, different-ness, humor — all of these make explanation memorable and “sticky”. You can’t buy weirdness off the shelf. When you mix weirdness with a serious approach to explanation and understanding, you’re cooking with fire.

3. Keep caring. There’s no doubt that demand is high for what we do, and there are opportunities in this space for a lot of talented people to help people understand a complicated world. That should come first — the genuine desire to help and contribute. There are other reasons to be in this space, and you might realize short term gains by doing work you don’t care about. All you have to do in that case is fire up the project management software and call in the army of contractors.

I can tell you, though, that you don’t get for doing work you just want to turn a nice margin on.

So before you kick off that next project, ask yourself if you care about it, and the people who will watch it.

NutIntuit Studio Announces Climate Science Series with KUEN and CPB

NutIntuit Studio is proud to announce an upcoming video series designed to help middle schoolers better understand the latest climate science.

The project, entitled the “Utah Climate Literacy Partnership,” will be produced as part of a package of online learning materials delivered by KUEN, a Salt Lake City-based public television station.

The project is made possible by a generous grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Learn more about the grant program here.

NutIntuit Studio Teams up with Public Television

We’re tickled pink that NutIntuit Studio has been chosen to produce — in collaboration with the Utah Education Network — a series of videos on Internet safety for kids. The videos will be created to augment the NetSafeUtah project, which “provides tools to help families communicate and have a safe online experience.”

It’s an honor to have been chosen for the project, and we’re looking forward to rolling out the “NetSafe in a Nutshell” video series over the coming months.

The Neuroscience of Explanation

What makes a good explanation? Of course, there are many ways to approach this question, but a recent article on The Daily Beast, “The Science of When to Get Married,” by Hannah Seligson got me thinking about the cognitive processes that trigger understanding and decision making.

Seligson’s article is about the neuroscience behind what drives people to make life-long commitments to each other. Bear with me; this is relevant to our exploration of what makes a good explanation!

According to researchers, lifelong commitment to a partner is driven by a complex interaction between the rational and emotional parts of the brain. Seligson writes:

We know from how the brain works that there is so much information that cannot be accounted for in a spreadsheet,” says Jonah Lehrer, whose new book, How We Decide, presents the latest research on the process of decision-making.

In other words, our rational sides are simply not equipped to make complex and far-reaching decisions like when to get married. “The rational brain can only take in seven pieces of information at one time,” Lehrer says. “When it gets more than that, it’s like an old computer trying to run Vista.

Rational brains falling down on the job when faced with a barrage of information? This sounds a lot like the problem most people face in many aspects of their lives these days: information bloat. It’s .

In the case of love and commitment, Seligson writes, another, very powerful decision-making part of the brain has to be put to use:

Because of this limitation – and because love brings with it such a bombardment of considerations – Lehrer is a proponent of listening to the emotional part of our brains when making such decisions, which can process more information than the analytical part.

This part of the brain is called the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). When we are drawn to a person (or a type of music, or an ice cream flavor), that’s the OFC flexing its mental muscle. It’s the part of the brain that integrates visceral emotions into the decision-making process, and reacts to feelings of reward.

Now, I’m not saying that choosing, let’s say, , is as important as choosing who you’re going to spend the rest of your life with. But there are similar forces at work here, and it raises questions about how explainers can help people get “married” to a concept. Could it be that explanations that appeal only to the rational part of the brain, explanations that bombard us with statistics, numbers and a stream of facts are less effective than those that also appeal to us on a more emotional level? When creating explanations, should we keep the “OFC” in mind to make them more memorable and more meaningful?

I didn’t realize it before I read this article, but now I understand that when I make Nutshells, I am engaging in a delicate balancing act between rational and emotional appeal. Certainly, no effective explanation can appeal solely to the emotional brain. This comes across as flaccid hogwash. On the other hand, explanations that exclusively appeal to the rational brain are equally unbalanced, thereby alienating the viewer. As Seligson writes, balance is key:

Lehrer argues that while unconscious emotional instincts can have merit, he doesn’t believe they should be acted upon immediately. In fact, he waited years before proposing to his wife. Nor is he a confederate of the Blink school of thought, popularized by Malcolm Gladwell, which promotes the value of rapid decision-making, or “thinking without thinking.”

The emotional and rational parts of the brain are always engaged in a delicate interplay, trying to sort out the world as it unfolds before us. Could it be that designing experiences with this interplay in mind is one of the keys to creating effective explanations?

The Psychology of Funderstanding: "Easy to Read, Easy to Do"

Thanks to Tom at Explainist, I came across a fascinating new study that was recently covered by Scientific American.

The study, which was conducted at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, posed a simple question:

Is it possible that the simplicity (or complexity) of how a task is described and processed—whether it feels “fluid” or “difficult”—actually affects our attitude toward the task itself and ultimately our willingness to put our head down and work?

To test this, researchers devised a simple, yet ingenious experiment. Two groups of students were given a set of instructions about how to perform a series of exercise routines:

Some received instructions printed in Arial typeface, a plain font designed for easy reading; others got their instructions printed in a Brush font, which basically looks as if it has been written by hand with a Japanese paintbrush—it is unfamiliar and much harder to read.

The results were pretty astounding, but somewhat predictable when you think about the role that clear, easy-to-understand explanations play in making people feel empowered and motivated:

Those who had read the exercise instructions in an unadorned, accessible typeface were much more open to the prospect of exercising: they believed that the regimen would take less time and that it would feel more fluid and easy. Most important, they were more willing to make exercise part of their day.

So there you have it; even the appearance of simplicity is a powerful motivator. Think about how we could influence decision making and feelings of personal empowerment if these results were applied to a whole range of technologies, products, and ideas!

It goes without saying that NutIntuit Studio’s Nutshells are designed from the ground up to generate the kind of “funderstanding” that leads to feelings of empowerment and motivation, even when the subject might feel daunting to the viewer at first.

New Study: Online Video Big in 2009

A new study, courtesy of PermissionTV, a Boston area-based streaming video technology company, offers some insights into the value of online video as we move into 2009.

Here are some highlights from the survey of "Over 400 senior-level decision makers in a variety of industries":

• More than two thirds of respondents (67%) identified online video as a primary focus of their 2009 digital marketing campaigns.

• In Q2 of 2009, more than half (52%) of respondents expect to be implementing or extending an online video project, whereas currently less than one-third (32%) are doing so.

• A majority of respondents (63%) are most likely to invest in a branded content/video destination next year.

• Nearly 60% of respondents consider interactive video experiences to be the next evolution for online video.

• When asked how online video will enhance customer engagement, a vast majority (71%) stated it would help build brand awareness.

Read the full study here (PDF).

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