
Gruen transfer - edward
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gruen_transfer
======
bostonpete
These two phrases from the brief article seem like they're at odds with each
other, no?

    
    
      "surrounded by an intentionally confusing layout"
    
      "providing a sense of safety and calm through exceptional familiarity"

~~~
colordrops
Doesn't sound contradictory to me. When I go through a hedge maze I feel both
safe and confused.

~~~
bostonpete
I wasn't commenting on confusing vs. safe so much as confusing vs. familiar.

~~~
majormajor
I think you often have both.

Ask anyone who's ever had a job with a bunch of corporate bureaucracy but also
felt familiar and comfortable enough with their ability to navigate it that
they were hesitant to leave.

------
ocschwar
Casinos work hard to impose the same effect.

If you've watched the show The Americans, you probably recall the scene of
Nina's execution, and that was based on real life practice: walk the condemned
through a twisty corridor with lots of turns to disorient them so it doesn't
dawn on them that the purpose of the walk is their killing.

Meanwhile, architects are working on facilities for elderly people with
dementia, and trying to impose the exact opposite: provide the patients with
visual cues to keep them as oriented as feasible.

~~~
tonto
How about software.. Open up a program or website... You lose original purpose
of being there instead mindlessly browsing

~~~
ableal
"You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike" as it says in the
classics ...

------
dmerrick
Here's an excellent episode of an excellent podcast about this:

[https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-gruen-
effect/](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-gruen-effect/)

------
vaughanb
I'm not sure about the Gruen Effect, but can verify the Doorway Effect is
real.

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-walking-
throu...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-walking-through-
doorway-makes-you-forget/)

~~~
lokopodium
This is almost like paged memory with faulty cache write-back.

------
jacquesm
Props to the man for not wanting to cooperate.

Is there a word for 'the Ikea effect'?

AKA showing you everything and forcing you to waste your time rather than just
allowing you to quickly target the one thing you came for. Exponentially made
worse depending on how many people are present in your party.

~~~
lokopodium
Oh come on, Ikea allows you to go directly to the warehouse, use a computer to
locate the thing you're after and get lost. It also has maps and shortcuts to
get you directly to the department you're after. Costco, on the other hand...

~~~
PeterStuer
Oh, com on, IKEA"s are deliberately designed as a maze. Yes, there are 'semi-
hidden shortcut passages' and maps, both required by the fire department, but
they also are deliberately obfuscated. The name of the maze game seems to be
maximizing impulse buying, not just by forced exposure, but also gamed to the
psychological effect that when on the threshold you will grab it 'now' anyway
as you will never find your way back, and once in the cart 'dumping' it again
in an 'inappropriate' place is something most people don't do.

~~~
petercooper
IKEA has an almost Disney-esque level of "magic" and ability to become an
expert in negotiating their space while pleasurably manipulating casual
shoppers. IKEA can be a super efficient experience if you're in the know but
it takes a bit of work - I suspect this actually endears them to both types of
shopper, and anyone who sees through it and hates it stays away.

------
3131s
Wow, I have been in Southdale Mall in Edina, Minnesota many times throughout
my early life but never knew of Victor Gruen. It does feel comfortable in a
way, and I don't even like malls. Southdale is still a very high-end mall.

~~~
ocschwar
Gruen wanted Southdale to be the nucleus around which to build a European
style Aldstadt (town center). The parking around Southdale was where he was
intending to design apartment houses.

That's why Southdale has a feel to it that subsequent malls don't.

~~~
FearNotDaniel
"Altstadt" means "Old Town", which in many Germanophone cities also coincides
with the "Zentrum" or city centre. But it specifically implies the presence of
medieval or baroque-era buildings, not the kind of thing you just throw
together on the periphery of a suburban mall in Minnesota...

~~~
ocschwar
Gruen did not intend to throw together anything.

------
lobo_tuerto
I don't get it, looks like the Wikipedia definition is not congruent:

"...the Gruen transfer (also known as the Gruen effect) is the moment when
consumers enter a shopping mall or store and, surrounded by an intentionally
confusing layout..."

A bit below:

"...is realized by deliberate reconstruction, providing a sense of safety and
calm through exceptional familiarity."

Can a confusing layout cause exceptional familiarity? or what am I missing
here?

------
chris_wot
There is a show on the national broadcaster in Australia that literally just
deals with this.

~~~
aplummer
Do you mean the Gruen transfer? It’s just a show about advertising in general,
not the Gruen transfer effect itself.

~~~
martyvis
You are correct that TV programmed isn't so much specifically about the effect
as such but about the whole way advertising, marketing and the like is
pervasive in aiming to convince people to do things that they might not do
otherwise.

~~~
exodust
The show is now called "Gruen", they dropped "transfer" for some reason.

At first I thought this HN post was publicising the TV show since a new season
starts early May. Perhaps the OP is a fan of the show. It's a bit random
linking to a short Wikipedia article on the Gruen Transfer? A page that
happens to mention the TV show twice.

As for shopping mall design, I suppose we're not far off from pop-up
holographic personalised intrusive social tracking considerations. Apparently
some restaurants at least are designing their interiors to be phone-camera
friendly, but also... you get the picture.

------
cbanek
I didn't realize that there was a name for this, but this feels like every
Vegas casino. They also do lots of other tricky things, like not generally
allowing windows or having clocks on the wall.

~~~
smoyer
Completely agree (and came here just to say the same thing).

When I last stayed in a casino's hotel (the late '90s I think), there also
weren't clocks in the rooms (but at least there was Kino on TV). Being an
east-coaster and an early-riser, I went downstairs looking for breakfast at
about 0330 or 0400. It always amazed me at how narrow the entryway and exit
were ... you could easily get in but the exit was disguised and who's going to
see a lighted exit sign in a room full of other flashing lights?

------
black_puppydog
Wow, this is like facebook IRL! Draw them in with a specific goal (like
reading a message in a chat), then confuse them until they don't know what
they wanted to do, and are unable to leave... :P

------
colordrops
Is there a name for the equivalent techniques used to homogenize local
television news and make it so domestic and familiar?

~~~
smacktoward
That's called "happy talk":
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_talk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_talk)

It was invented in the late 1960s by a guy named Al Primo, who came up with it
as part of a broader reinvention of the local news show format he undertook
while working at KYW-TV in Philadelphia. This new format (called "Eyewitness
News":
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyewitness_News](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyewitness_News))
replaced the traditional format of a newsreader reading stories from a desk
into segments oriented around video from the scene of the story. The
newsreader became the news _anchor_ , providing the links that tied the
various field segments together.

The old newsreaders had always been presented in a dour, serious way, since
they were telling stories that could be very serious indeed. But in the
Eyewitness News format, they weren't telling those stories directly anymore;
that had been passed to the correspondents in the field, with anchors now
serving as a kind of tour guide. That meant their old super-serious
presentation didn't really fit them anymore; people wanted the new anchors to
be more approachable, more relatable. Primo figured out that adding a bit of
light, upbeat banter between them accomplished this very effectively, and
"happy talk" was born.

The new format was a huge hit; KYW surged to the top of the local ratings, and
Al Primo got hired to run news programming at the ABC Network's national
flagship, WABC-TV in New York City. He took the Eyewitness News format with
him, and within in a few years it was being copied by stations all over the
country.

(Interestingly, the other big format for local news -- "Action News"
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_News](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_News)),
which took the Eyewitness News format and tightened it into shorter, faster-
moving segments fronted by younger anchors -- came out of the Philadelphia
market as well. Local station WFIL-TV originated it in an effort to stay
competitive with the surging success of KYW and Eyewitness News.)

------
amelius
If hacking is illegal, then why _isn 't_ hacking into the mind?

------
splitrocket
“Inner space is no longer a neat literary metaphor for alienation. Thanks to
mobile technology, it has become virtual real estate”

[https://www.newscientist.com/article/2100074-mall-tales-
an-a...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2100074-mall-tales-an-artists-
take-on-modern-retail-psychology/)

------
petercooper
_Many more shopping malls started opening using similar designs and were very
popular until the 1990s._

"Until the 1990s"(!) :-) Try a modern Westfield mall. They're usually rammed
full of people and doing crazy levels of business, based around a similar
approach.

------
Numberwang
Tell me about it. I entered this IKEA three months ago. I hope to some day
find my way out.

~~~
unwind
Time to read up on SCP-3008[1], hopefully some hints in there on how to
survive. Good luck.

[1] [http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-3008](http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-3008)

