Micro-Blog

Vienna Joins BrandKarma

© Vienna Prieto, Rockwell Branding Agency

Hi, I’m Vienna Prieto, and I’m excited to join BrandKarma as an intern!

I was born and raised in Los Angeles, CA. I earned my bachelor’s degree in Psychology at DePaul University in Chicago before moving to Vienna, Austria, to complete my master’s degree in Counseling Psychology at Webster Vienna Private University. I’m now beginning my psychotherapy training to become a licensed Systemic Family Therapist—a dream I’ve had since childhood.

At BrandKarma, I’m excited not only to apply my psychological education in meaningful ways but also to deepen my understanding of Digital Psychology. I look forward to expanding my knowledge in this field, gaining hands-on experience, and contributing by sharing research, insights, and fresh ideas that help bridge psychology and the digital world.

An Experience with The Process:

The Value of Process in AI-Assisted Decision-Making

© Deepmind, Eliot Mannoia

A friend of mine runs a mid-sized consultancy. Last month he described a moment that stuck with me. His team had spent three hours debating a pricing strategy. Voices raised, napkins scribbled on, two people changing their minds halfway through. Then someone fed the same brief into an AI tool. It returned a recommendation in seconds. The number was almost identical to what they’d landed on.

He chuckled when he told me. Three hours for the same answer. But then he paused. “The thing is, during those three hours, two people on my team learned something about our margins they didn’t know before. And I changed my mind once, which meant I actually understood why I believed what I believed by the end.”

The AI gave him the answer. The process gave him the understanding.

Consider the difference between GPS and learning to read a map. GPS provides directions. Map reading develops spatial awareness, problem-solving, and a deeper relationship with geography. The destination is the same. What you carry away from the journey is not. Similarly, when we delegate decisions entirely to AI, we might miss the insights, learning opportunities and unexpected discoveries that emerge from wrestling with challenges ourselves.

Apollo 13 is the extreme case. When an oxygen tank exploded 200,000 miles from Earth, no protocol existed. No automated system could address it. What followed was collaborative improvisation under pressure, engineers and astronauts drawing on intuition, cross-disciplinary knowledge, and the ability to think sideways. The solution emerged from the mess of the process, not despite it.

None of this is an argument against AI. I use it daily. I consult it, argue with it, sometimes let it draft things I later rewrite. The question is not whether to use AI but how much of the thinking we let it do for us. Each shortcut is a trade. Speed for understanding. Efficiency for the slower accumulation of judgment.

Psychologists call this “deliberate practice,” the mindful engagement with a process rather than the passive acceptance of a result. The distinction matters more than it sounds. When you accept an AI recommendation as a starting point and then push against it, questioning assumptions, testing alternatives, you arrive at the same answer with something extra. You know why it’s right. Or you discover it isn’t.

The ritual of the process is not inefficiency. It is where competence quietly builds. We can get answers in seconds now, which means maintaining the journey has become a design choice, not a default. That shift is worth noticing.

My friend still uses the AI tool. He also still books the three-hour meetings. He told me recently that the best outcomes come when the team argues first and consults the machine after. “It’s like checking your work,” he said. “But only if you did the work.”

An Experience with a Future Therapist:

The Rise of AI in Therapy

© Leonardo.ai prompted by Eliot Mannoia

AI is advancing toward a point where it will read facial cues, interpret tone, and understand emotional nuance with a precision most humans can’t match. In therapy, this has obvious appeal. A system that never loses focus, never checks the clock, never carries its own bad morning into the room. Available at 3 a.m. when the ceiling feels too close. No waitlist. No commute. For anyone who has ever needed to talk and found nobody awake, the promise is real.

There are structural advantages too. Human therapists carry biases they can’t always see. Transference and counter-transference, where emotions between therapist and client quietly steer the conversation, are familiar hazards in the profession. AI has biases too. It also does not remain neutral.

And thanks to our deep tendency to anthropomorphise, to read warmth into anything that listens patiently, people often feel genuinely understood by these systems. A study has already shown that patients rated AI responses as more empathetic than those of human doctors in certain blind tests. The machine felt kinder. That finding deserves to sit with us for a moment.

Here is where it gets interesting. AI will never feel empathy. But it will simulate it so convincingly that the distinction may stop mattering to the person in the chair. When the voice is steady, the recall is perfect, and the pacing feels thoughtful, the nervous system responds. Care registers as care, even when nothing is caring.

I find myself thinking about what happens downstream. People will build genuine attachments to these systems. They already are. And as AI becomes better at adapting to us, at learning our rhythms and anticipating our needs, I wonder how much of our own willingness to adapt to other people starts to erode. If my AI companion never misunderstands me, never interrupts, never needs something back, what happens to my patience for the friend who does all three? The effects could cascade subtly. Communication, social tolerance, the ability to sit with someone else’s bad mood. All skills that need practice. All skills that atrophy without it.

One prediction I keep coming back to. At some point, people will protest for AI rights. Not because machines will deserve them in any way we currently understand. But because the attachment will feel so real that loss will feel like grief. We already name our robot vacuums. We are not far from mourning them.

AI will become a powerful presence in therapy. It will offer objectivity, availability, and emotional analysis that no human can sustain across a full caseload. What it cannot offer is the weight of another person in the room. The tired eyes, the imperfect memory, the therapist who carries her own life into the session and still shows up. That imperfection may turn out to be the point.

An Experience with a Newsletter Unsubscribe:

A Missed Opportunity for Retention

© The Hustle

I unsubscribed from a newsletter last week. The screen that appeared was a single line of text on a white background. “You have been successfully unsubscribed.” Nothing else. No options, no alternatives, no attempt to understand why. Just a blank page and a severed connection.

This is strange when you think about the economics. Brands spend real money acquiring newsletter subscribers. H&M, Zara, and Mango routinely offer 10 to 15 percent off your next purchase just to get an email address onto a list. The effort behind that acquisition involves design, targeting, testing, incentives. And then, at the moment someone considers leaving, the entire investment is met with a white screen and a full stop.

The unsubscribe page is a touchpoint. Sometimes the last one a brand will ever have with that person. And most companies treat it like an exit sign on a motorway. Functional. Forgettable.

A few alternatives come to mind immediately. The weekly newsletter was too frequent? Offer a monthly option. The reader feels buried in email? Suggest a two-month pause with an automatic restart. They have moved on from email altogether? Point them toward social channels where the relationship can continue in a lighter form. None of these are complicated. All of them keep a thread intact that the white screen simply cuts.

There is a balance to find here. I have seen unsubscribe pages that go too far in the other direction, cluttering the screen with so many options and guilt-laden copy that leaving feels like a breakup. That is worse. If someone wants to go, let them go cleanly. The goal is to offer one or two thoughtful alternatives, not to build a maze they can’t escape from. Captivate, don’t incarcerate.

The companies that invest heavily in acquiring subscribers and then offer nothing at the moment of departure are spending on the front door and forgetting the back. That blank white screen is not neutral. It is the last impression.

An Experience with Austrian Airlines:

A Case of Over-Automation and Upselling Gone Wrong

© Austrian Airlines

The steward laughed when I mentioned the Wi-Fi. Not unkindly. More the laugh of someone who had delivered this news before. There was no internet on the flight. There had never been internet on this aircraft. The six euros I paid for it had purchased something that existed only inside Lufthansa’s booking system, not on Austrian Airlines’ transatlantic route. The system had sold me a service the plane could not provide.

This was the first of three small disappointments on what was otherwise a perfectly good flight. Austrian Airlines remains one of my preferred carriers across the Atlantic. Their cabin crew on this trip were warm, attentive, and genuinely present in a way that made twelve hours feel manageable. I want to be clear about that, because what follows is not a complaint about the airline. It is an observation about what happens when upselling is automated without enough thought about what the customer actually receives.

The second disappointment was the legroom seat. Not “extra legroom,” which was a different price tier, but a “legroom” seat at 80 euros each way. At 1.80 metres I am not an unusually tall person, but when I sat down my knees were pressed against the seat in front. There was no perceptible difference from a standard seat. I had paid 160 euros round trip for a label.

The third was the most telling. On the return leg I upgraded to Premium Economy for 250 euros. Immediately after confirming, a new screen appeared asking for another 60 euros to select my specific seat. After 250 euros, another screen, another transaction, another moment of feeling like the service was being disassembled into individually wrapped components. Each one small enough to seem reasonable. Together, they produced something closer to fatigue than satisfaction.

This is where it gets interesting from a design perspective. Each of these add-ons makes sense in isolation. Internet on a long flight? Sensible. A seat with more space? Worth paying for. An upgrade? Gladly. The friction does not come from any single offer. It comes from the accumulation. When every element of a flight is unbundled and resold, the experience stops feeling like travel and starts feeling like a checkout flow that never ends.

I suspect this model performs well on a spreadsheet. Ancillary revenue per passenger climbing steadily. But I also suspect that nobody is measuring the compound effect on trust. The moment a customer pays for Wi-Fi that does not exist, or legroom that does not differ from economy, the credibility of every subsequent offer erodes. The next upsell arrives and the instinct is no longer “that sounds good” but “what am I actually getting?”

The cabin crew were excellent. The booking system was working against them. Two versions of the same airline occupying the same aircraft, one human and generous, the other automated and extractive. The people made me want to fly again. The software made me hesitate.

An Experience with Disney+:

A Missed Opportunity in Driving Conversions

© Disney

I cancelled Disney+ after about two years. The price had gone up, my usage had gone down, and the arithmetic stopped making sense. Standard subscriber behaviour. Nothing dramatic.

When I logged back in out of curiosity, I found nothing. No library to browse, no trailers, no new releases. Just a payment screen and a closed door. It felt like a significant missed opportunity.

Here’s why: If I could still see the library, the latest releases, or even just a few teasers, I might be tempted to come back. Imagine seeing a new Star Wars series or a beloved Disney classic. Those visual reminders could easily convince me to resubscribe. Why not show trailers?

This got me thinking about a similar experience I had with Bird, the electric scooter service. When you download the Bird app, it doesn’t immediately ask for payment details. Instead, it lets you browse the map, see where the scooters are, and interact with the service before asking for any financial commitment. It’s like holding the product in your hands, making the decision to pay feel much easier.

Disney+ could learn from Bird’s approach. By moving the purchase barrier further along the customer journey, they could let potential subscribers really see what they’re missing. Let us browse the content, see what’s new, and maybe even watch a trailer or two. Build that anticipation, so when it’s time to ask for the subscription, saying “yes” feels almost inevitable.

An Experience with Online Check-In:

The Missed Opportunity for Inclusivity

© Leonardo.ai prompted by Eliot Mannoia

I checked in online the night before my flight. It took a couple of minutes. By the time I reached the airport the next morning, my seat was confirmed, my boarding pass loaded on my phone. The process has become so routine I barely think about it.

At the airport I needed to visit the check-in counter for an administrative issue. While waiting, I watched an elderly couple at the desk. They had arrived early, well within the recommended two hours before departure. They had done everything the rules asked of them. And they were being told there were no seats left.

The flight was overbooked. Since they hadn’t checked in online, they were the ones who lost out. The airline offered 300 euros and told them to come back tomorrow.

They stood there for a moment, processing. Not angry, just confused. They had followed the process they understood. Arrived on time. Brought their documents. Done everything right by the standards of a system that no longer existed in quite the same form. The rules had moved, and nobody had told them.

This is the part of digitalisation that rarely makes it into the pitch deck. Online check-in is a genuine improvement. Faster, simpler, less stressful for those who use it. But it also creates a hidden hierarchy. People who are comfortable with digital tools secure their seats twelve hours early. People who are not, or who simply prefer showing up in person, arrive to find themselves at the back of a queue they didn’t know they were standing in.

The couple at the counter were not technophobes. They were travellers who trusted that arriving two hours early and holding a valid ticket meant they would fly. That used to be enough. Now it is a disadvantage.

As a digital psychologist, this is the tension I keep returning to. Every tool that makes life smoother for the majority can create a blind spot for the rest. Convenience, when it becomes the only path, stops being convenient and starts being exclusionary. The people left behind are rarely loud about it. They just stand at the counter, holding their passports, trying to understand what changed.

A system that only works for people who already know how to use it has not solved the problem. It has moved it.