Scientists who make apps addictive
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Scientists who make apps addictive
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Re: Scientists who make apps addictive
#2Also on the infamous game:
https://youtu.be/tqG74aI9t3Q
Studying psychology intensively as a lay person can say this game is genius.
Re: Scientists who make apps addictive
#3Hum, mumble mumble... I may have experimented something like that, having become an Emacs addicted... But I'm sure enough that no Emacs devs work with such theory in mind :-)
Maybe I also have a rebound effect against certain platforms/apps/digital jails... How many sharing this around here?
Anyway, seriously: in the history we (as society) learn to distinguish good and bad things, generally the hard way, we develop society-antibodies for many "bad things". Unfortunately actual rapid growth of corporatocracy, while it's not nothing new under the sun, it's evolved quicker than society capacity to metabolize it and that's a real big danger for us all.
At nazi times it's easy to identify "the enemy" if someone go bomb you, go invade your country, have clear uniforms, symbols, clearly state that want to dominate the world it's easy to understand that's not good. But "new enemies" learned that well, they suppress symbols, they ceased to appear a unique body (of course, they are not, but even original nazi are not a unique body, have had they internal fight etc) they do not say they want to conquer anything but only "having success", like anybody want... Well for the mean, typical biped that's not much evident. Especially since actual "humans" disappear being presented as "platforms" with unclear propriety, with tons of different commercial brands that belong to a sole subject but most people do not know or if they appear in person they present themself as "genius in it's lab", young happy hippy that "work for a better world".
And even worse, ancient dictatorship require strong power to stay and evolve, actual corporatocracy do not. They simply remains as the sole option to buy services or products. They do not have to prohibit something "free" like open PCs, open cars etc, they simply stop to produce them after having bought any possible other producer, substituting them with jails but well presented, well colored and of course "for our safety".
Re: Scientists who make apps addictive
#4The development of online software over the last 10-15 years is a case study in feedback loops. It really has flipped the paradigm.
For lotus notes, success is when a user makes the software do what she wants, like sending an email. In the modern equivalent, the software (designer) succeeds, when the user does what the software wants, like sending an email.
Re: Scientists who make apps addictive
#5The development of online software over the last 10-15 years is a case study in feedback loops. It really has flipped the paradigm. For lotus notes, success is when a user makes the software do what she wants, like sending an email. In the modern equivalent, the software (designer) succeeds, when the user does what the software wants, like sending an email.
Nicely said. This really summarizes how I feel when I use a lot of modern websites. I often feel manipulated. Instead of me driving the interaction the website tries to impose its opinion on what I need or want.
Re: Scientists who make apps addictive
#6The development of online software over the last 10-15 years is a case study in feedback loops. It really has flipped the paradigm. For lotus notes, success is when a user makes the software do what she wants, like sending an email. In the modern equivalent, the software (designer) succeeds, when the user does what the software wants, like sending an email.
Nicely said. This really summarizes how I feel when I use a lot of modern websites. I often feel manipulated. Instead of me driving the interaction the website tries to impose its opinion on what I need or want.
Every UI presents an opinion. In many cases, that opinion is unclear, muddled, or counterintuitive. As developers and designers pay more attention to the UX, that opinion becomes more clear and unilateral. In the end, the decision to like a piece of software or website depends on how well your expectations align with the opinion that the UI expresses.
If you feel manipulated, it means that you did not want to do something, but the UI expressed its opinion in a way that was strong enough for you to notice it.
If the UI expresses its opinion in a way that aligns with your intentions, it gets called easy-to-use, unobtrussive, frictionless, and other nice-to-hear words.
Re: Scientists who make apps addictive
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nicely said. This really summarizes how I feel when I use a lot of modern websites. I often feel manipulated. Instead of me driving the interaction the website tries to impose its opinion on what I need or want.
Every UI presents an opinion. In many cases, that opinion is unclear, muddled, or counterintuitive. As developers and designers pay more attention to the UX, that opinion becomes more clear and unilateral. In the end, the decision to like a piece of software or website depends on how well your expectations align with the opinion that the UI expresses. If you feel manipulated, it means that you did not want to do some…
I think a big differences is between
a) tools for professionals/experts where the assumption is the user knows best what it wants, and will spend time figuring out how to reach it
b) the instagram/autotune etc kind of tools that make everyone feel like an expert without doing the work, by providing very nice results for very little effort, but as a user you will very quickly run into the limititions when you form your own opinion.
Many tools that used to be a) now are becoming b) which is nice because it can increase power and productivity for everyone, but the experts and pro's are left behind... What's even worse for them is these simplified tools are often not created by domain experts...
Re: Scientists who make apps addictive
#8I think the general danger with computers is falling into a trap of repetitive behavior. In the age of letters you'd check your letter box maybe once a day. Now everywhere we have systems of immediate responses. It creates these loops of repetition where the constant stream of new data drives the user to be constantly aware of the possibility to respond and consume. What if letters could arrive at your home invisibly, at any time, without you knowing it? The problem with technology seems to be that when things become too easy, they often seem to acquire a potential of being destructive in a way that they hadn't before.
Re: Scientists who make apps addictive
#9The development of online software over the last 10-15 years is a case study in feedback loops. It really has flipped the paradigm. For lotus notes, success is when a user makes the software do what she wants, like sending an email. In the modern equivalent, the software (designer) succeeds, when the user does what the software wants, like sending an email.
Wow, this is probably the most insightful comment I've read in the past 2 years on HN. Thanks.
It is also a giant market opportunity. If there were a video site for tutorials (in every field) that just show what you want and not emphasize "user engagement" (time on site) instead of, "hey what's up youtube justin here and today we're going to take a look at how to (click, snip, tie, step, whatever). Intro music. So last week we looked at something totally unrelated and a lot of you got back to me with a request for how to do this one simple thing. (Montage of comments asking how to do one simple thing.) Well have no fear because Justin is here. All you're going to need is what you put in the search field, and today for this demonstration I'm also going to put in a totally unrelated product from our sponsor in a vaguely related industry. If you want to check out more information check the links below. Okay, let's get started. So, this is what you searched for. Have you ever wondered how to do the thing you searched for? Like this. Okay ready? This. And, there you have it. Now to finish this up I'm going to also go ahead and do this, this, and this, and.. voila. The picture in the thumbnail. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and if you liked this video be sure to tell all your friends. Thanks again to unrelated products for their generous support. Got anything YOU want to see on this channel? Just leave a comment below. And as always, stay beautiful/fantastic/ amazing/smart/awesome/ productive/strong/etc."
I'm not sure what the right micropayment model is for 5 second tutorials but if some video site found it I would put that URL straight into the browser and search there.
Re: Scientists who make apps addictive
#10The development of online software over the last 10-15 years is a case study in feedback loops. It really has flipped the paradigm. For lotus notes, success is when a user makes the software do what she wants, like sending an email. In the modern equivalent, the software (designer) succeeds, when the user does what the software wants, like sending an email.
This is a symptom of detailed metrics. When you're responsible for the "send an email" feature, you want to show you're doing your job. Getting more people to send email is an easy way to show progress without having to understand people's actual experience with the feature.