Head of Design at Facebook: How Her Team Uses Data To Make Decisions
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Re: Head of Design at Facebook: How Her Team Uses Data To Make Decisions
#2One thing that is implied is a strong understanding of who the users are and what they want from the product. I'm always encouraged to hear of large, influential companies talk about these sorts of things because I hope that these practices become more standard. Understanding users rather than guessing at what they want and measuring the effects of changes made seem to be obvious, but I'm always surprised at how often it isn't done.
Re: Head of Design at Facebook: How Her Team Uses Data To Make Decisions
#3One thing that is implied is a strong understanding of who the users are and what they want from the product. I'm always encouraged to hear of large, influential companies talk about these sorts of things because I hope that these practices become more standard. Understanding users rather than guessing at what they want and measuring the effects of changes made seem to be obvious, but I'm always surprised at how ofte…
Perhaps the founder does not want to pander.
Re: Head of Design at Facebook: How Her Team Uses Data To Make Decisions
#4FTA:
"Facebook had a really boring deactivation page when you close your account... [One of the designers created a page] which has all your friends waving good-bye to you as you deactivate. Give you that final tug of the heart before you leave. This reduced the deactivation rate by 7%."
While that's a nice reduction in deactivations, it also strikes me as somewhat manipulative. It feels like many of the "social" companies see users solely as metrics to optimize, not as human beings.
Re: Head of Design at Facebook: How Her Team Uses Data To Make Decisions
#5FTA: "Facebook had a really boring deactivation page when you close your account... [One of the designers created a page] which has all your friends waving good-bye to you as you deactivate. Give you that final tug of the heart before you leave. This reduced the deactivation rate by 7%." While that's a nice reduction in deactivations, it also strikes me as somewhat manipulative. It feels like many of the "social" com…
You say "manipulative", I say "persuasive".
Is it manipulative to optimize the tag line on your landing page? You're trying to persuade a visitor to buy your product. Or are you trying to manipulate them to buy your product? The same principal applies to keeping customers.
I'd call this manipulative when it becomes disingenuous. For example, had they put actual speech bubbles above my friends' heads and led me to believe that they actually were asking me to stay. Until then, this is roughly akin to saying "Hey man, don't leave the party yet. We haven't had cake yet!" To which I'd reply "OK, well twist my arm why don't you" and then eat some cake.
Re: Head of Design at Facebook: How Her Team Uses Data To Make Decisions
#6FTA: "Facebook had a really boring deactivation page when you close your account... [One of the designers created a page] which has all your friends waving good-bye to you as you deactivate. Give you that final tug of the heart before you leave. This reduced the deactivation rate by 7%." While that's a nice reduction in deactivations, it also strikes me as somewhat manipulative. It feels like many of the "social" com…
farmville is basically one long manipulative tug
Re: Head of Design at Facebook: How Her Team Uses Data To Make Decisions
#7FTA: "Facebook had a really boring deactivation page when you close your account... [One of the designers created a page] which has all your friends waving good-bye to you as you deactivate. Give you that final tug of the heart before you leave. This reduced the deactivation rate by 7%." While that's a nice reduction in deactivations, it also strikes me as somewhat manipulative. It feels like many of the "social" com…
It's interesting that the only time Facebook seems to want to offer you any kind of emotional experience is when you're trying to leave the site, and the experience is designed to be a negative one, rooted in guilt.
Re: Head of Design at Facebook: How Her Team Uses Data To Make Decisions
#8FTA: "Facebook had a really boring deactivation page when you close your account... [One of the designers created a page] which has all your friends waving good-bye to you as you deactivate. Give you that final tug of the heart before you leave. This reduced the deactivation rate by 7%." While that's a nice reduction in deactivations, it also strikes me as somewhat manipulative. It feels like many of the "social" com…
You say "manipulative", I say "persuasive". Is it manipulative to optimize the tag line on your landing page? You're trying to persuade a visitor to buy your product. Or are you trying to manipulate them to buy your product? The same principal applies to keeping customers. I'd call this manipulative when it becomes disingenuous. For example, had they put actual speech bubbles above my friends' heads and led me to bel…
> You say "manipulative", I say "persuasive".
i say false dichotomy. you may have persuaded your friend to stay at the party. you didn't do her any favors if she has to get up early tomorrow. a user at that final screen has clearly made up their mind.
also, saying "* will miss you" is not too far from putting "i'll miss you" in a speech bubble above them. i wouldn't miss >%50 of the people on my fb list and it misrepresents me to say i would miss them.
Re: Head of Design at Facebook: How Her Team Uses Data To Make Decisions
#9FTA: "Facebook had a really boring deactivation page when you close your account... [One of the designers created a page] which has all your friends waving good-bye to you as you deactivate. Give you that final tug of the heart before you leave. This reduced the deactivation rate by 7%." While that's a nice reduction in deactivations, it also strikes me as somewhat manipulative. It feels like many of the "social" com…
You say "manipulative", I say "persuasive". Is it manipulative to optimize the tag line on your landing page? You're trying to persuade a visitor to buy your product. Or are you trying to manipulate them to buy your product? The same principal applies to keeping customers. I'd call this manipulative when it becomes disingenuous. For example, had they put actual speech bubbles above my friends' heads and led me to bel…
Well the deactivation page did automatically say that the users "friends" would "miss" them. Did they actually check with these users to see if they would want their image and identity to be used in this way? If not, then it seems pretty disingenuous to me. How do they know that these users will actually miss them? Why is facebook assuming that my friends would not respect my decision to leave facebook if that was the case..
Re: Head of Design at Facebook: How Her Team Uses Data To Make Decisions
#10FTA: "Facebook had a really boring deactivation page when you close your account... [One of the designers created a page] which has all your friends waving good-bye to you as you deactivate. Give you that final tug of the heart before you leave. This reduced the deactivation rate by 7%." While that's a nice reduction in deactivations, it also strikes me as somewhat manipulative. It feels like many of the "social" com…
You say "manipulative", I say "persuasive". Is it manipulative to optimize the tag line on your landing page? You're trying to persuade a visitor to buy your product. Or are you trying to manipulate them to buy your product? The same principal applies to keeping customers. I'd call this manipulative when it becomes disingenuous. For example, had they put actual speech bubbles above my friends' heads and led me to bel…
If I'm told by a machine that "X will miss you", I do consider that disingenuous. There's a programmer using a program, trying to get an emotional reaction from me by the entirely speculative claim that another human being - probably emotionally close to me, but more probably not emotionally close to them - will miss me, suggesting an emotional connection human->machine->human where none exists, trying to exploit my natural tendency to anthropomorphize. And that kinda rubs me the wrong way.