Archive for the tag 'Alex Kirtland'
Ouch! - Finding from a Web usability expert (Jakob Nielsen): 50% of Web readers don’t scroll down the webpage.
Chris F. Masse November 15th, 2006
Studies by Mr. Nielsen’s company, the Nielsen Norman Group, an Internet design firm in Fremont, Calif., show that only 50 percent of Web visitors scroll down the screen to see what lies below the visible part on their PC monitor. “Users spend 30 seconds reviewing a home page,” Mr. Nielsen said. “A business must encapsulate what they do in very few words.”
Web Usability Links:
- Jakob Nielsen: UseIt.com - AlertBox -
- David Pennock and Robin Hanson, the wannabe bloggers, would probably pass the following Jakob Nielsen test: Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes - by Jakob Nielsen - 2005-10-17
- Alex Kirtland - Blog: Usable Markets - E-mail interview with Alex Kirtland.
“Prediction markets”, “idea futures”, “event-driven futures”, “European call options”, “event derivatives”…
Chris F. Masse November 7th, 2006
… and now “information derivatives“. (Via George Tziralis) What is remarkable is that you can shorten it as “ID” (or “IDs“, plural). (Prediction markets are often referred as “PMs”.)
My Question To My Readers: Which term(s) do you like most? In my short list, in the blog title, I forgot to mention terms including the word “stock”, which Alex Kirtland told us is the most commonly understood by “people” (as opposed to prediction market professionals).
My Questions To Bernd Ankenbrand: Would you mind telling us more about GEXID, here, on this blog? And do you know some English-speaking colleagues of yours who would like to be registered at Midas Oracle? And Gutten Tag!… (That means Bonjour, right?)
Addendum: This is hilarious. They needed to consult an army of German lawyers to make sure that play-money prediction exchanges won’t be assimilated with gambling operators.
Are you trading with real money?
No. In all gexid markets we trade with gexid euro (play money). Your portfolio at the end can be converted in prices the issuer prices.
Is trading at gexid like gambling?
No. gexid is not a place for gambling. Independent expert opinions by several lawyers in Germany confirm this fact. Therefore there is not need for regulating gexid. Upon request gexid will provide you those expert opinions.
What the hell is a “swicki” on prediction markets?
Chris F. Masse November 4th, 2006
Sounds like a “swicki” is a search engine restricted to a specific area of interest. Bizarre that they call it with a name close to “wiki”, as in “Wikipedia“, which is not a search engine but an encyclopedia. I expected more wisdom from Internet usability expert Alex Kirtland, who provided great inklings in the e-mail interview posted on this group blog last month.
http://prediction-markets-swicki.eurekster.com/
prediction markets by alex kirtland from http://www.usablemarkets.com/
This swicki will help you find prediction market related information on the web.
Reminder: George Tziralis (who recently reviewed all the prediction market papers) has set up a Google sub-search engine for the prediction markets.
Hint: Our good doctor David Pennock (whose insightful prediction market blog is far less popular than our group blog Midas Oracle, in all logic) is widely rumored to be hatching something of the same kind using Yahoo! Search Builder.
What to think of all those Wisdom-Of-Crowds sites popping up like forest mushrooms after an October rain?
Chris F. Masse November 1st, 2006
Via Art Hutchinson (just out of summer hibernation), this mid-October Wash Post article quoting two usual suspects:
Justin Wolfers, a business professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, said collective wisdom — reflected for instance in the stock prices set jointly by millions of knowledgeable investors in the open market, and in sports betting lines determined by large groups of avid gamblers — is more likely to be accurate than Web sites claiming to feature experts. Someone must have a track record stretching back decades before it is statistically possible to conclude whether success results from talent or random chance, he said.
—
“If they’re really consistent, it’s kind of hard to see how the sites will survive. The experts will leave,” said Robin Hanson, an economics professor at George Mason University.
More Reading: WSJ on fantasy wagering sites.
Note: I’m not covering those Wisdom-Of-Crowds sites on Midas Oracle or CFM, but our blog colleague Alex Kirtland does it from time to time on his blog. I prefer focusing on prediction markets and other predictive markets. Those Wisdom-Of-Crowds sites are probably very interesting too, but I can’t spread myself too thin. I will be vigilant, and provide links to some great, recap-it-all stories (like the two above), from time to time, though. If other Midas Oracle Post Authors want to publish something on those Wisdom-Of-Crowds sites, in their forecasting dimension or else, they should feel free.
Google to commoditize prediction market software? (Or Yahoo!. Or MicroSoft.)
Chris F. Masse October 31st, 2006
That’s Professor Ely Dahan’s educated guess (or suggestion?) at the end of his Google TechTalks presentation (the last 5 minutes).
How can we better understand customers? - (Video) - (via George Tziralis) - [STOC] - by Ely Dahan - 2006-07-18
Second Thought: I don’t agree too much with Ely Dahan that innovation is done (or unimportant) in prediction market software, and that commoditization is around the corner. There are many types of trading software, and many flavors. Which one is the best? See Richard McLister’s blog post or Alex Kirtland’s blog post and you’ll see that the discussion is still open. How can we commoditize if some issues are not settled yet?
Best Trading Interface? Here’s One Possibility.
Robert McLister October 30th, 2006
Alex Kirtland is right on the money when he suggests equating prediction markets with a familiar concept like stock trading. This is often the easiest way to get new users up to speed.
Clearly, building a simple trading interface is critical for generating interest and liquidity among the masses. One area where simplicity is sometimes elusive, however, is with short selling.
In many prediction markets users typically have to “short” a contract if they want to bet against something happening.
The problem is that a lot of retail users don’t understand how short selling works. It is easier for them to put their money on something not happening then to sell a contract based on something happening.
One solution that we’re implementing is to have only one contract but display it in two formats (views) side-by-side:
1) The market FOR the event occurring; and,
2) The market for the event NOT occurring.
The posted bids and offers would be the exact same for both contracts. The market for the event NOT occurring would simply be inverted.
For example, suppose we have a contract for Hillary Clinton winning the 2008 U.S. Presidential election.
The contract FOR Hillary to win might look like this:
| BidSize |
Bid |
Ask |
AskSize |
| 50 | 15 | 20 | 500 |
| 1 | 10 | 25 | 50 |
| 5 | 5 | 30 | 100 |
| 1000 | 1 |
The contract for Hillary NOT to win would simply be the inverse of the above view, or:
| BidSize |
Bid |
Ask |
AskSize |
| 500 | 80 | 85 | 50 |
| 50 | 75 | 90 | 1 |
| 100 | 70 | 95 | 5 |
| 99 | 1000 |
The exchange, or software vendor, could display both views side-by-side and handle the conversion of quotes (or odds) on their back-end servers.
For example, if someone bought 10 contracts FOR Hillary to win at 20:
- The AskSize at 20 would decrement by 10 in the FOR view
- The BidSize at 80 would decrement by 10 in the NOT view
Both would happen simultaneously (since the quotes in each view represent the exact same market participants).
This is one possible solution anyways. Just tossing it out there…
Robert McLister
T2T Technologies, Inc.
www.1stTick.com
Marketing vertical play-money prediction exchanges (industry-focused, I mean)
Chris F. Masse October 24th, 2006
HSX is the only vertical play-money prediction markets that has had a viral success. Probably for two reasons. Number one, everybody likes a good movie or chatting about Hollywood stars (so we’re almost talking horizontality, here). Number two, Amy Lamare and company are doing a great job of feeding their Web-based community. Creating a Web-based community for the data storage industry strikes me as costly. Thus, unlike the Usable Markets blogger, I’m not that impressed by Storage Markets’s P.R. release. (Usable Markets’s Alex Kirtland is easily impressed, I would say, as a parting shot.)
My Question:
Don’t you think that the future belongs to generalist prediction markets striking deals with vertical consultants? Kind of PredictionX + Rimdex?
Quote Of The Day:
“Predictive Markets work,” said Alex Costakis, senior vice president and managing director, Hollywood Stock Exchange®. “We have been applying this technique to answer market intelligence questions for the motion picture industry for the past ten years. Studio executives would be paralyzed without the insights that the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ provides. I have no doubt that the data storage industry will find the Storage Markets tool extremely useful.”
An Email Interview: Alex Kirtland
Alex Kirtland October 22nd, 2006
(A note from AK: So, in case you haven’t noticed, Chris has proposed email interviews as a way to get a bit more participation on MidasOracle. I’m happy to start off by answering his questions to me.)
Chris Masse: What is the best public explanation of prediction markets? As “stocks” (Hollywood Stock Exchange, Washington Stock Exchange), as “event futures” (InTrade), or as “event derivatives” (HedgeStreet)?
Alex Kirtland: Considering that most people have probably never heard of derivatives, that most of the rest don’t know much about futures, and that almost everyone has heard of the stock market, I’m going to say that treating prediction market contracts as stocks is probably the best way to go for the general user.
For example, saying “They’re like stocks, but different,” is easier for most people to understand than: “You’re buying a futures contract on the likelihood of an event occurring that pays out either 0 or 100 depending on the result.”
Starting with something familiar, and then introducing complexity, rather than trying to be accurate right off the bat, is usually a better way to go.
That said, if the majority of your users are traders in pork belly futures, then using the stock market as your metaphor to explain prediction markets may just confuse them.
CM: What is the best trading model from a usability perspective: one single class of securities àla TradeSports (where selling means short-selling the “yes” contract) or two classes of securities àla Iowa Electronic Markets (where selling means selling the “no” contract)?
AK: I don’t know the answer to that, and I’ve actually pondered over this for some time. I’d like to do usability testing/user research to try and figure this out. Just from an academic point of view I think understanding this would be fascinating. But also I think that this has implications beyond prediction markets. Certainly brokerage houses and exchanges might be interested in understanding how to make trading easier for people who may not know how to trade, or are less familiar with trading.
My hunch is that both models work (in fact both models do work), but which one is better is a question of context - who is the user; what is their experience trading; what is the market; is margin involved; if so, how do we communicate that to the user; and so on.
I know there is a large body of research on behavioral economics, which I’m not as familiar with as I should be, but I don’t believe anyone has ever researched this specific question.
CM: What is the best pricing model from a usability perspective: a continuous price (HSX) or a 0-100 price (TradeSports)?
AK: It depends on the situation. Sometimes they’re clearly inappropriate - a linear contract for a binary question, for example. One is not inherently more usable than the other. It’s more important how it’s presented to the user.
CM: Should the designer of a new trading screen be innovative or be subordinated to the users’ mental model (if any)?
AK: This is a fascinating question. First understanding a mental model and being innovative are not incompatible things. The mental model is usually a starting point from which innovation can spring forth. This is why you do user research: so you can understand how your users think (or even if they do) about the task you want them to perform.
So, it’s not so much that innovation (or, better, interface design), is subordinate to the user’s existing mental model(s), but how do you take advantage of an existing mental model(s) to get the user to more easily do what you want them to do on your site.
Secondly, a lot of readers are probably asking, “what the hell is a mental model?” Briefly (and quite vaguely), a mental model is a mental representation of something. For example, most everyone has a mental model of how a restaurant works. You go in, there may be a host, you sit, you order, they bring you food, you eat, you agonize over whether you’re going to get desert or not, you pay, and then you leave.
There’s a lot of subtlety to this mental model. Things can change drastically depending on whether you’re at a diner, a food cart on the street, or a five star restaurant. But the basic process is the same.
It’s important to note, though, that in and of itself a mental model has nothing to do with the interface of an application. It is usually a hodge podge of heuristics, tasks and sub tasks, and so on, all jumbled together. They don’t necessarily need to be a true representation of the world, but they need to help the person act in the world.
Referring to the above example, my mental model of a restaurant allows me to go to all sorts of restaurants I’ve never been to before, have appropriate expectations about what will happen there, and act accordingly.
As an experience designer we’re not necessarily interested in shaping our interfaces to someone’s mental model - we don’t want all interfaces to be exactly like McDonalds - but we do want to be aware of them and take advantage of them … and not violate them either. We don’t want to build a restaurant and not serve any food, for example. Once you violate someone’s mental model of some thing, then they’ll have no idea what to do next.
Donald Norman’s book, The Design of Everyday Things, is a good place to learn more about mental models and how they should used when designing an inteface.
CM: Should prediction exchanges set up corporate blog(s) and why? (And if “no”, why not???)
AK: Trendio, The Public Gyan, and TradeSports, for example, actually use their blogs quite nicely. These blogs, generally speaking, tell people about contract expirations, changes in margin, new contracts, and so on. They’re very useful to the people who trade on these sites.
Other prediction exchange corporate blogs are nothing more than self-promotion. That’s not a bad thing, but it’s less useful for traders on the site, and more useful for the person promoting the site (or the blogsters covering that site).
Prediction exchange blogs shouldn’t be treated differently than any other blog: they should publish on a timely basis, and write about something that is of interest to their users. If they can’t manage that, then they shouldn’t keep the blog.
