In the loop

Scott Liddell, Head of Enterprise Solutions at Standard Life, circles back on his first ever computer programme to make sure Choices has a key element missing from so many finance propositions — the simple loop.

I wrote my first computer program on a Sinclair ZX81 aged 12 — a long time ago. If there was any footage of this inauspicious event it would be quite grainy and faded. The good news is that no video is required as I can reveal to you the entire source code, here it is:

10 PRINT “SCOTT”
20 GOTO 10

As you can probably guess, when you run this, it spins down the screen printing out my name forever. When you are 12 that is pretty cool. In 1982, it felt like science fiction on a TV that tuned manually with a dial on the front. The great thing is, it’s still cool now and it features a really important part of what sits at the heart of what we’re building in Choices — a loop.

Loops are everywhere in computing and, without them, not much would happen. When we say a programme is “running” we really mean that there is a loop in there somewhere making it keep turning like the cogs in one of Harrison’s clocks.

Whatever you are using to read this now has a loop at its heart. The loop listens every now and then to make sure you’re not asking to do anything different and then carries on with all the other stuff it needs to do. You will see loops in action when things go wrong. What you will more regularly call a “crash”, a program not responding, is very often failure of its loop. Either it has stopped or is spinning out of control and not listening for commands any more.

In recent years, computing has, in some senses, moved away from loops. As we have transitioned to the internet and web technology we are now what is known as “stateless”. We hit a button, a page loads and everything stops until the next “event” kicks things off again. The “event” is usually the next click and therein lies the problem. To keep things moving, you need the user to keep going, they must be the loop.

Let’s take the example of a typical finance portal or dashboard. A user might load some data, they may even see something interesting, they might even make a note to do something about it. But what makes them return the next day or the next week? How will they know if something has changed? They would need to keep coming back, keep looking, looping.

This behaviour, the user loop, is a construct of the narrative self that we met in Questioning time — Part 2. Of course I care enough about my finances to build that routine in my life. Yes I’ll keep coming back. I’m happy to be in a loop. Loops are good. The experiential self doesn’t like loops. Must I? Really? Every week?

We sometimes refer to ourselves as “time poor”. This is a bit of a cover story. We choose how to use our time. It’s time prioritisation, not starvation. We choose not to come back to our finances. Our internal loop takes us back round the things we want to do. We call it a routine. Its contents are carefully curated to maximise the things we like and minimise the things we feel we must.

The simple truth is, for your financial life to work as well as you need it to, there has to be a loop somewhere. Things change, stuff happens, the world moves on and, as it does, what you need your finances to do moves with it. But if we agree that leaving it to the user to be the loop is problematic then where is the loop in their stateless world of web technology?

When we set out to build Choices I was sure of one thing. It needed to have a loop. Something needs to be running all day, every day to be keeping an eye on things, looking for changes, listening, prompting, caring — when you’re not. Therefore it could never simply be another stateless web experience that asks the user to do all the work. It needs to run.

And with that I have come, somewhat pleasingly, full circle. I started with a loop and I have returned to the loop. Very simple and, as it happens, the thing that is missing in so many finance propositions. Time to add one.

10 PRINT “MAKE GOOD CHOICES”
20 GOTO 10

You can follow Choices and Scott here on Medium for more, or drop us a line if you know someone we should speak to about building the future of life savings. Email simon_lyle@standardlife.com