TINY CAMERAS!?! We found out what those customer satisfaction buttons actually do

I'm Anny, this is Devin, and this is no such thing.

Show we settle are the arguments in yours by actually doing the research on today's episode, are you happy or not? A deep dive into those bathroom reaction buttons.

There's no no such thing, no such thing. No touch than.

Touch thank no touch thank all Right, So today's episode was actually inspired by a listener named Emma.

Hey, guys, my question is what is the purpose of immediately action in person reviews, like when they ask you to hit a smile or fri anny face after you go to the bathroom. I just was asked to sell out one of the post office. I know that most online reviews help with Google ratings, but it doesn't seem like those in personal ones would contribute to that. And it's also hard to believe that they actually care enough to look at the reviews in these places.

Thinks by the bathroom one is really interesting to me, so many other ones to make more sense, Like you know, now when you do to tap to pay, sometimes they like they got the at the restaurant, they got the dumbs.

Up down usually skip it whatever.

But that makes sense because it's like, oh, we're getting a lot of dumbs down.

Based on the media. Yeah, it's an immediate Why is there thumbs down to you? Yeah, doing it? But the bathroom one one is a physical button in airports.

Yeah, that's where I first noticed it. Yeah, I feel like stadiums.

Yes, I have it. Now, Like how did we do it?

Because it's like gas stations, random places sometimes and.

Those kind of super public places.

It's not like our choices matter.

Yes, we need we have after it's not an option.

My thought when I read this question was I that those things probably are barely even doing anything or no one's looking at it. It's it's purely just like a maybe I'm mad because I had to wait in line, and now I get to do this and it makes you feel better and it might stop me from going off.

Yes, I don't online or something.

I don't got to find a person already. I'm done.

I'm done, So this would be somewhat of a conspiracy.

Yeah.

I think they're putting that out there and they know that it doesn't.

It's like the button thing at a crosswalk.

Oh yeah, where you know so much of them are not even connected, right, Yeah.

Only two hundred and fifty nine of the twelve hundred crosswalk buttons in San Francisco actually change a traffic pattern.

Meanwhile, in New York City, just one hundred of the one thousand worked in twenty eighteen.

But you get there and you press the button and you think, okay.

I pressed the button to change someone got to sleep.

And then thirty seconds later it changes, and you're like that was because of me.

Yeah, they would have just you know, have never stopped.

So maybe it's something that that like to that, like you're saying, it's like okay.

Yeah, kind of just like t s as like kind of of yes, doing something.

Like we care about your opinion on this thing. Yeah, go ahead press that butt But not even connected that.

Do you guys ever press those buttons? I was, I was, I have, I think, but not again, not thinking it's gonna do anything.

Maybe almost more just like a something to do.

Yeah, you know, I've got a curious mind.

You just want to let my opinions be know, it's just like a fidget spinner on the way out of the bathroom.

Yeah, I guess.

I'm also thinking like if I have hit them, I've never hit the happy one, probably always hit the deep red.

I like that.

I do like that.

It's not just happy and sad. It's like there's four usually in the milaious ones, so it's.

Really upset, kind of upset. Okay, really I like that gradient.

So it's been a few weeks since we had our last discussion about those buttons in the bathroom. So I found the company behind most of those devices.

Their name is Happy or Not and I spoke with Scott Erickson.

And I am the VP of US sales and global channels and Happy or.

Not Happy or Not, like I said, as the company behind most of those instant reaction buttons.

It is a Finish based company. Hmmm, which is funny.

Because Finland last eight years happiest country, Happy.

Or Not pretty happy.

Maybe the ability to give feedback in so many public places.

Has made them more happy.

It's to them feeling feeling heard and respected.

So the founder actually came up with the initial idea when he was a teenager, a.

Guy named Hickey Vannen, and he was actually shopping in a retail store somewhere in Finland and.

He couldn't find someone to help him. So we've all been in a place where you're like, oh, like you want to complain, but like you don't want to go find a manager.

You're not going to like put in famously. Yeah.

So he was like, man, it would be cool if there was a quick way to get feedback.

And he had this moment of inspiration, like there's got to be a way to easily share that sentiment with that particular company.

He was a teenager at the time, so he didn't really do anything about it, but he came back to the idea. And the quoting in Finland is if you have like a startup idea, the government will actually give you some money.

Wow.

They got a lot of startup money from the government of Finland to put this idea together. So the company has a few different devices where mostamiliar with, like the four emoji version. They also have like iPads and other things. But I realized last time we did a pretty bad job of actually explaining what it looks like. So I'm actually gonna send a photo here.

What I'm looking at here is essentially a stand with a device on at the top of the stand and it says please rate our service today, And there's four emoji options, two smiley faces, one really dark green, one lighter green, two frownie faces, one kind of red and then the final one is very red.

So this is what we sucked up last time. There's no neutral option here.

Yeah, this is really happy or not. Yeah, you gotta pick a side.

There's no mes so we take the neutral out of it. You're either really happy, you're happy, you're unhappy, or you're really unhappy. So we truly do force that person. You got to pick one exactly to tell us what's out of the fence.

They' wrong.

There's no middle ground for us, because we don't think the middle ground actually does anything as you're describing.

We've done plenty of surveys whereas there there's a lot of neutral yes, and they're annoying and I always.

Said I use them, yeah, but we probably get it and they're like what.

Yeah, so yeah.

The big thing is there's no neutral option on the device. You gotta you know, you gotta pick you happy or not. And the most shocking thing to me is someone is actually looking at this data.

How real time is this? Is this something that you're collecting?

I pressed the button in that data as being transferred automatically?

Does it happen in batches? Is it?

You know a couple of days later that you're able to sort of look at it collectively or is it you.

Know, just in the moment.

It is indeed real time. And all of our devices have a SIM card in them, so they act like a cellular device, so they're transmitting via cellular network. As soon as you make it live, it's transmitting had a live in real time, which again is the true essence of what we're trying to do for our customers.

Did A big thing too, is that they're collecting this data as the thing is happening. Right, A lot of surveys are asking you about a moment in your past. You know, you're leaving the bathroom and you are immediately like was that bathroom clean or not? You're not thinking back to that's powerful was the bathroom clean? It's very powerful.

Well, because it's like, especially something seemingly as innocuous as an airport bathroom, even if I have a you know, say there's no toilet paper or something's missing, I'm not happy with the situation. Yeah, if someone reached out a month later like, hey, we know you flew into lax, what'd you think unless something really horrible happened, I'm going to just be like, yeah, I'm not doing.

This click now do real time, meaning when I press frowny face, it's gonna be like nine to fourteen pms. Okay, wow, that is.

Very Not only that, but someone if they're looking at it, could see that, could see right, not like a lot of it and yeah wow yeah.

So let me let me play this bite that's going to talk about how to sort of look at this data in real time.

Circling back to my restroom use case example. So we're helping those airport operations teams monitor the cleanests of those restrooms where our devices are deployed, and then on the back end, we're collecting all of those feedback data points and displaying it to them in a clean, simple to use analytics dashboard so they can monitor the trends every

M HM.

So you could send out basically like you're saying a push alert A you know, the bathroom by Toronto A is getting a lot of uh, you know.

Mad faces exactly, So say many goes in there.

Just fux it up, bad situation, nasty ship all over the floor, which has never happened never.

I'm just saying this for example.

Yeah, it's not you, man, not you, it's a guy.

Named man in the bathroom of an airport.

Sure so then handsome tall guy.

So then there's you know, fifteen twenty minutes that everybody just read rare smiley face, horrible, nasty as cross so happy. The people who work at that airport could get an alert on their phone saying, oh go check out bath from their terminal. A we got a lot of reds, and that is that's not the norm at this time of day.

This is kind of game changing to me that this is happening in real time, the fact.

That anyone is looking at it at any point.

I basically thought those things weren't even plugged in, yes, or whatever would be. I thought it was literally like a board game or something with a little button that.

Yeah.

Now here's a question. Have either of you seen what happens to the screen after you press one of the buttons? Does you say, like it's just like a screen it's literally there's literally four buttons, so it doesn't say like your response has been sent to.

It doesn't even I don't even think they light up when you press.

It's literally it's like if you press the light switch and nothing happened.

Ye, that's how it would feel.

It's like pressing a button on a remote.

I see yeah, yeah there's no TV.

Yeah there's no TV if it's registering.

But there is something happening. You're turning on a TV somewhere exactly.

You couldn't be.

You could be. No, you definitely are.

And they have they have versions that are more complicated, like I've haads, it's stuff that are more thorough. But the ones that we are we say the most popular ones are just the four buttons.

There's no and a question. That's it. It's simple, simple.

I feel like we have to test this.

You're gonna go pressing.

It's maybe not worth going through airport security, but we just start hitting that red butt.

You need such scale.

Yes. The thing too is they can protect against people.

If you were pressing a million times all at once, yeah, that's not going to really register versus Okay, we got an hour.

And it takes time.

For something is still there.

Yeah, so a manager can't just go and just press during green greener and green, green green.

Wow, they've thought of everything in the bamart.

But there's also something very shocking about these devices.

Shocking there's a camera in them.

Oh what the fuck.

This, I did not know, camera in a bathroom, immediately raising some red flags.

All right, we are going to take a quick break and when we get back, what the hell are cameras doing in these devices? There's also something very shocking about these devices, shocking there's a camera in them.

Oh what the fuck this, I did not know, camera in a bathroom, immediately raising some red flags.

So there is a camera in the device, and we're not taking photos of anyone, but we are assessing via some AI technology to allow us to predict that person's age and gender, and that can generate a number of benefits. But one of the main benefits is automatically filtering out

So when you're so, you're are you using this the agent gender data just to weed stuff out or do you also use it as say, hey, we're noticing that, you know a lot of older people are giving you know, negative reviews to you know, let's say a restaurant. You know, maybe that's a segment that the music is too loud or something. You know, it's like, are you how are y'all using that age data?

Yeah, so filtering out age data is one definitive use case.

Well, yeah, because my thought was obviously the kids thing.

But then I was like, oh, you could also then filter that kind of you know, the Karens, you know, be like you know, they're they're not going.

To be satisfied as a fife. Yeah, so like, yeah, we're going to cut out the trash.

Yeah, we're going to cut out this segment and under fourteen.

Groc please under fourteen boys and forty plus year old white women from the responses.

Yeah, they're resting up with the data too much. It's not fair the outliers.

Yeah, that is crazy though. The camera thing, I mean, it makes sense from their use case of wanting to filter out people who are more likely to be just fucking around on them. Yeah, but that does raise some concerns about just like, Okay, my child's is being recorded in the bathroom.

And this is not a device that you would I have similized that there's no indication that there there's a camera.

When I think of them, Oh my god, I'm sure there's a small dot somewhere. Now keep an eye out, But I imagine this is something that came on later.

So yeah, they actually started introducing cameras post COVID. So remember COVID happens in twenty twenty. Oh, we don't want to touch stuff, yes, So in March of twenty twenty one, they introduce a device that recognized gestures versus touch an actual button. So you would hold up a certain amount of fingers which would indicate whether you're happy or not. So you'd put up like two fingers, which will be like a smiley face, and then it would recognize it

Oh I see.

And to be fair, as far as the bathroom concern is, they're always positioned on the entryway. Yeah, yeah, you're not going it's even around the corner from where you'd be even by the sinks.

Yeah yeah, but you can imagine. But yeah, certain oh yeah, these days politicians.

Hey, and I asked them, I didn't even notice thing had a camera. How you protected my security, my privacy? Yes, you say, well, let me ask you this. So you're, like you said, you're not taking or storing photos of people. So what happens with how how do you protect customer data? Because I would imagine most people don't even realize that that's happening when you're pressing the buttons. So how do you make sure that that data is not, you know, doesn't end up somewhere.

Yeah, this is getting probably a little bit technical, but just generally speaking, we're not storing anything on the actual device nor in the cloud, So rest assured to your listeners, there's no privacy concerns of any kind. We're simply just taking what we call a vector analysis of that person's face, and that allows us to map it against a predictive method to predict the age and the gender.

Gotcha.

So it's not I would imagine the devices are not being trained on the data that it's being inputed. It's taking sort of whatever prompt you have already given it and implying it in that instant, and then the photo is gone.

Yes, does that make sense?

Yeah, you're describing correctly. Although there is no photo, there's no there's a record of any kind that has maintained.

So not gonna lie. You know.

I went into this thinking I was just talking about buttons. Now we're talking about AI and privacy concerns.

Yeah, Sonny, you know.

I reached out to Jason Kiebler, he's a tech report at four Form Media, to get some insight into like.

Should we be concerned about this? You know, what's happening here.

So I'm concerned.

He was pretty shocked.

That there were cameras, so he had some privacy concerns, not only about like the disclosures that they're recording you, but like holiday processing this data. So I reached back out to Happy or Not after I did the interview, and they reiterated what Scott said during the interview that the system does not collect, store, or transmit identifiable images or personal data. The AI detects a face and it creates a one and twenty eight dimensional vector based on

Yeah, I mean that could be literally anything under.

That could be one percent. It could be one percent that is worse. Up to up to means the most accurate is going to be is ninety five percent.

It's never gonna get to one hundred. So in certain situations we're talking you.

Know, stadiums are talking, thousands of airports even more, yeah, talking thousands of people every day. It could it could be thousands slipping through the craft.

It could be up to being wrongly aged. It could be up to but you know, who knows.

And this is the sort of thing where it's like, yeah, they're not going to share it with me, their AI data and video and.

Sports on No.

Yeah, I hope, we should hope not, but it is you know, we're also asked about like what is the likelihood that you know, something like this can be hacked. They said, everything's encrypted, you know, on the device itself. You can't get access to the data too. So you know, they said they put in a lot of precautions to make sure that whatever demographic data they are collecting on you is not traceable back to you. There's no photos or live streams or anything that is stored anywhere.

Hmmm.

And I did, but I did ask the disclosure question of just sort of like, okay, all this is fine, but like shouldn't you guys just say like, hey, here's a camera here.

Yeah, and they're like.

That's basically on the people who are buying these devices. Based on wherever you are, you should follow whatever local rules there are around or having disclose.

Yeah, that information. Yeah, because I wondered if I mean it does sound.

Illegal when you go when you go into say a bar or something, and they're filming something or whatever and it has the sign on the front line it.

Might be recorded.

Yeah, I guess it's basically that rule.

And maybe I guess an airport probably does have that yah, yeah, you know or whatever, like most have it.

We gotta look out to see if they're Yeah, because there's probably they would probably say it's the same.

It's all under one thing.

Yeah, like maybe got security cameras and there's a camera camera in the airport, and that camera is not going to be used, you know if there's a trial. Yeah, right right, and you stole something, they're not gonna be able to pull a happier not information.

That's the real test theoretically. Well, here's what we do commit a crime, Yes, one of these things, no other witnesses. Yes, you see what happens.

So I'll rob one of you guys, kill what they do?

Kill one of us. Yeah, go to a bathroom a Happier or Not.

Yeah, we know how to kill from episode three.

You go on these devices and you do like a Jinx confession. I know if Friedman.

Have killed I just killed this man in front of the Happier.

My experience was great, green smile.

That'll be true because then we'll know, Because then then you'll get like the FEDS. You know, you get police trying to Hey, you gotta give us this information. So if it is being stroyed anywhere, that would be yes, I will find out.

We could even like pose as like yeah, someone who's looking for information just email them like, hey, I.

Just got my friend who just got murdered in this bathroom.

Hey, hey see the footage.

I'm the FBI, the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Man was murdered in a JFK bathroom, and I will.

View of the Happier Not.

Could you slide me that link.

Please unencrypt the vector?

Please unencrypted eight dimensional vector.

I think that'll really help with this case.

Okay, So after this episode aired, we got some more clarification from Happier or Not. I initially asked them, are cameras standard on all of their new devices. They responded saying, yeah, cameras are standard on all new Smiley Touch devices. But what they didn't clarify is that Smiley Touch is a name just for their touchscreen devices, not all of their devices which you can touch. So if you see a touchscreen that has a camera, if you don't see a touchscreen, it does not have a camera.

Okay, that's your episode.

I asked him basically, what percentage of people who pass these devices actually press a button?

Yeah, again, it does vary by the sector and the use case. But just as a kind of a high level average to give you, we're in the kind of the ten percent neighborhood. In certain environments we see twenty to thirty percent engagement, So it can be really really high.

Which to me doesn't seem not high.

No, but if you think where they are, yeah, I mean so, he said, let me see airports and stadiums.

Ten percent of people that go to the bathroom of the airport, I mean that thousand.

That's a lot of people.

He put me on a spot, asked me, Ohm, I ask you how many people are there in the world.

Oh, it's like eight billion.

Now, okay, I got that right. I just took that off. I just could.

I only know. I only know I from doing the seven foot episode everyone should listen to.

Because growing up, yeah, it used to always be oh, seven billion, seven million, So they've.

Gotten anyway, this is a long way.

They've gotten two billion responses.

So he was comparing this to say, like, you know, when you get those like email surveys or whatever after the fact, and like four percentage.

Of people actually feel those out, it is.

Not unheard of for email surveys as far as the engagement level to be in like the quarter percent to half a percent response, Right.

I'm offended when they send me those even what yeah, or like you go to McDonald's or something and it's like you get free sandwich, you can get ten free sandwiches, fill out the survey.

I'm like.

And another interesting I would assume, like many were saying earlier, you know, they no neutral option. If people are going to press these buttons, I would assume for.

The most part, they'll be more likely to be upset.

Yeah, I'm gonna comp this is my way of complaining without actually complaining.

Yeah, with me leaving or review doing something else.

But my boy Scott said, that's not the case people assume that they're just gonna get negative reactions, they get a lot of positive fascinating.

A lot of people think they're just deployed to gather negative feedback, and it's actually quite the opposite. You'd be surprised how heavily weighted the positive feedback actually is. Really and I think as humans were kind of wired to want to share feedback good or bad, but people generally like to share positive feedback without a doubt.

I could see out a store like a convenience thing, and you know service cash year is just friendly, nice, whatever, easy. I can see smashing a positive for sure.

All right, So that was happy or not. We're gonna take a break. When we come back. We're bringing back one of my favorite segments, Dev's Hot Takes.

All right, we're curry segment. We done once.

This is our second time doing it. All right, welcome back.

It is time, ladies and gentlemen start the music for Dev's Hot Takes. Sometimes we do this dead silence, everyone's waiting. Sometimes we do these at the end of episodes. The people have been asking for.

Him all the time. Sometime we do them.

This So so fellas last night I went to the movies.

Oh nice, I saw.

I saw a project till Mary, beautiful film. You should bring baby Lula to it. Good family film. Okay, I got there late, which at the movies is early, So I got there about fifteen twenty minutes.

You know, trailers were still still showing trailer.

Probably just started the trailers and they said through like.

Fifteen twenty minutes more trailers.

Damn.

Here's here's a thing about when you go to the movies. It's one thing to show thirty forty minutes to trailers. Yeah, it should be illegal, I know, to show God damn Amazon commercials, Geico commercials. Yeah, you should not be allowed to show a commercial once the trailers start.

Yeah, if you're doing that in the pre yeah, the pre pre moment before the trailers you have whatever Guico, Amazon and Maria Minunos.

Yes, that's fine.

And trivia like trivia trivia. Yeah, that's that's fine. Once it's time and its trailer time.

Once I'm watching real trailers, real commercial paid to be here.

I don't need to see a double ad when it's twenty five minutes after the movie was already supposed to start.

So wait, and this is a long n I don't think I've run into this. You saw trailers and then you saw Adams mixed.

They try to fool you.

Yeah, so it'll be like whatever, It'll be like a Rolex commercial or something in there, and it's like and they're they're like so highly produced for it.

They start.

You're like, yeah, well they didn't they didn't show the thing, and you're like, what movie is this? And then it's like, oh, or it's a range Rover commercial. It's the one there's like, who's the guy from White Lotus THEO James. Yeah, he'll be there driving around, not in a movie. Wow, I haven't run into this.

What theater did you?

It's you know, we're regal heads here. So if I'm president, I'm passing a lot. First of all, you should have to tell people what time movie actually starts. Well, yeah, I need to plan my day if you're not going to start the movie till eight twenty. I had about, you know, fifteen twenty minutes worth of stuff I could have did before seeing the movie.

Yeah, and what's what's even at big?

The is like that. It's it kind of varies as far as it wouldn't actually start. Because sometimes if you not not at like a prime time seven PM or something that's gonna.

Have the standard trailers.

But if you go sometimes to a noon or something, there might not even be any trailers.

Yeah trailers they'll show.

It, which is nice, like halfway through the movie. Yeah, So like if you're used to the AMC regal lifestyle, basically you got thirty minutes.

You can't take that luxury all the time.

I got burned back during what's that movie Widows? Windows?

Widows Widows the Steve McQueen, No windows, what's with the bank with the lady with the hair? Oh well, I was like, wow, you're talking about a movie from five years like eight years ago.

Earl weapons. I showed up windows.

I mean they're looking through the windows.

To be fair, there are no weapons in the movie.

Hey there's the one that they imagine and it's not about school shooting.

Yeah yeah, but I showed up to that ten minutes late. I was like, oh, I got plenty of time. The movie was already started.

D happened to me they should be we should be on the ticket, or it should alert.

You, yes, something to be online or something, say it's gonna start fifteen twenty minutes no reason, and I get worried. You know, I'm I'm someone who likes to be there even before no risks. I said ten minutes, you're always safe with ten minutes. Yeah, I show up, the kids are already gone.

Damn, I didn't even see the kids.

Thank God, I know the kids.

What the hell is going on here? What's the problem.

I've been to regal movies where it's been thirty minutes of trailers and people show up thirty minutes into the movie.

You were an hour late to the time.

That is on you Like they're treating it like it's the twenties or something, and it's just like you just show up to the movies and you just sit through whatever.

It's like, what's going on?

You paid twenty five dollars to be an hour late.

I don't get it. Well, the thing will say, I want my money back, I'm gonna see another showtime.

Yeah, especially now you can you can basically refund anath tickets.

Yeah.

I feel like the thing with the.

Commercials that's so sinister. I feel like is that we've got, you know, kind of a social somewhat of a social agreement that if you pay money for something, you don't get advertisements exactly. You pay for the Netflix without ads, or like you pay for YouTube premium or whatever.

If I'm paying for this movie ticket and I have to see ads.

Trailers are another thing because you're they're trailers for other movies you might be interested with, like commercials for cars.

And ship That's disgusting.

You should be paying me to show that the commercials for the theater you're in.

We know, I know, we love the Nicole Kidman thing.

I get it.

But I'm here already. Yeah, show that on TV.

Yeah, why don't they show that on TV?

Hello? Like this is cool? Yeah, I'm here. You don't need to tell me to cool.

It's like a pep talkers.

No sense.

Thank Hey.

In case you missed it, Manny's new book, Colored People Time is out anywhere you buy books. We're going to link to it and show notes if you enjoy the humor and heart of this show, the love it.

To collection of essays.

I really love it, and I'm not just saying that because he's my friend. No such thing as a production of kaleidoscope content. Our executive producers r Kay Osborne and manghest Kaakadur.

The show was created by Manny Noah and me Devin.

Theming credit song by Manny, mixing for this episode by Steve Bone, and thank you to Tyler Hale for some additional production on this episode. Our guest to speak was Scott Erickson from Happy or Not. There's actually a great New Yorker piece about Happy or Not by David Owen that we're going to link to in our show notes, so check that out.

This is not just thing that show. To subscribe to our newsletter.

If you have feedback for us or question, can email us at Manny Noahdevin at gmail dot com, or if you're in a US you can leave us a voicemail call the number in our show notes, and who knows, we may do an entire episode based on your question. Emma, thanks for running in. We had a lot of fun getting to the bottom of this one. We'll see y'all next week.

Hell's Hell's hells He he knows, he knows such things.