Chapter 7. The Psychology of an Experience
Products and Psychology
It is not our intention to make a straight story out of this, we want to gag it in every way we can and make it as funny as possible. These little pigs will be dressed in clothes. They will also have household implements, props, etc., to work with, and not be kept in the natural state. They will be more like human characters.
—WALT DISNEY IN A 1933 MEMO TO HIS STAFF DURING THE PRODUCTION OF THE THREE LITTLE PIGS[125]
“Mother Mary,” THE ENGINEER blurted out. The excitement in his voice was palpable. “396 milliseconds.”
The temperature in the room instantly increased. His colleagues jumped up from their desks and crowded around him.
“Hot damn!”
“Don’t screw with us.”
“You sure you ran it right?”
The engineer nodded his head with a smile. “Checked it three times.”
The project manager called a company meeting. There was cause for celebration, and the word had to get out.
“When engineers measure the speed of a PC, they talk about something called the Doherty threshold of system response time,” he said to the crowded office. “When you ask your computer to do something and hit the Enter key, if it answers you back in less than 400 milliseconds—just under half a second—then you will stay glued to that machine for hours. Your eyes may glaze over, but your productivity will soar. Even a slight deviation back to half-second response time will allow your attention to stray. But under 400 milliseconds, that’s the sweet spot. Well, guess ...
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