The Eight O’Clock Experiment
The problem begins at about eight o’clock.
Two people want to watch a film.
This happens most evenings.
It should be easy.
It isn’t.
There are plenty of films available through streaming services, Film4, YouTube and elsewhere. The problem is not really access.
It is choosing.
The two viewers have different tastes.
One is more interested in finding something unusual, older or overlooked. The other generally prefers something new.
There is also a practical constraint.
By eight o’clock nobody particularly wants to spend half an hour researching what to watch.
Sometimes the search itself becomes the evening.
Sometimes a film gets chosen and turns out to be bad.
Sometimes one person falls asleep.
Sometimes both people end up looking at their laptops.
The ideal experience would probably be the cinema.
But going to the cinema every evening is neither practical nor cheap.
Paying individually for streamed films is unattractive too.
A monthly subscription of perhaps £8 or £9 feels reasonable.
Paying repeatedly per film does not.
So the problem was reframed.
Not:
What is the best film?
But:
Can two particular people be given a small number of films they are both likely to want to watch, available to them now, without turning choosing into another job?
That begins to look like something CHOB could investigate.
A deliberately tiny experiment emerged:
Two people. Six films. Seven evenings.
The work would be to understand the two viewers sufficiently well to select six films that genuinely bridge their tastes.
The recommendations would need to be practical.
Not theoretically perfect films hidden behind another rental payment or unavailable service.
Films they could actually watch.
The experiment would then observe what happened over seven evenings.
Which films were chosen?
Which were rejected?
How long did choosing take?
Did both people watch?
Did either disappear into a laptop?
Did anyone fall asleep?
Most importantly, was choosing a film noticeably easier?
This was beginning to resemble a bounded piece of work rather than an interesting conversation.
A possible CHOB emerged:
Create and test a decision aid for two people choosing an evening film.
The experimental price was £100.
But the CHOB was not authorised.
That distinction matters.
There was a proposed piece of work.
There was a possible outcome.
There was even a price.
But there was not yet an agreement to pay for the work.
So the investigation stopped at proposal.
The conversation also exposed something useful about CHOB itself.
A problem does not have to be large to be real.
It does not have to belong to an organisation.
It does not need a job description.
And the resulting work does not need to become a product or a permanent service.
It can simply be:
there is a recurring irritation,
there is enough evidence that it matters,
there is a bounded thing someone could do about it,
and there is a point at which the work stops.
At eight o’clock tomorrow evening, the problem will probably happen again.