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A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)
71–80 of 285 posts
Re: A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)
#72Being made to nibble little bites of text one at a time is a distraction. Images depicting clumsy or irrelevant metaphors of easily understood things are a distraction.
It's a slide deck from a presentation, not an essay.
Re: A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)
#73Make junk mail and spam e-mail illegal to start with. Then start doing something about regulating advertising. In an ideal world intrusive advertising would be banned and we'd have to go looking for ads to find them instead of them constantly demanding that we pay attention to them. But that'd entirely blow up Google's whole business model.
> Make junk mail and spam e-mail illegal to start with. CAN-SPAM[0] does exactly that for US businesses. Any email from a US business that is for advertisement or otherwise promotional (as distinct from transactional[1]) then it: * Must not have false or misleading from/to/reply-to * Must not have a deceptive subject * Must be labeled an ad * Must include a valid physical postal address * Must have a clear and conspi…
I remember when the CAN-SPAM act was in Congress. All of us who were following the issue looked at it and said, "this just legitimizes spam, puts a nice picket fence around it, and make sure that any company that wants to spam you knows exactly where the boundaries are so they can do so with impunity". As we expected, it didn't reduce spam at all, but now we have and industry and entire companies dedicated to mass unsolicited email. But they aren't breaking any laws.
Re: A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)
#74Presentations like these assume people are dumb animals not being able to control their lives. They need to artificially constrained to help them live. Saying bluntly, they need a nanny. I'm an active user or Google, Facebook, Apple, Twitter and all of them. I turned off GMail notifications for non-important mails. I unsubscribe/report spam promotional e-mail. YouTube autoplay is off (simply because the recommender i…
> Presentations like these assume people are dumb animals not being able to control their lives
You're vastly underestimating the potential to exploit human nature. Just by being here ranting like this shows that the topic bypassed your rational executive function and fired up your sympathetic nervous system.
Re: A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
The enforced ~500ms loading time between slides is a killer. Why not preload and display them immediately?
On mobile, the slides switched instantly. On Firefox Desktop it's like from hell.
On Firefox for Windows 10 - instant slide transitions.
Ryzen 7 2700X, 32GB, 300/300 mbps connection.
Re: A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)
#76It's funny how almost all the comments are about technical aspects of the presentation or how he said it, and not what he said. He's right, FWIW. How many times have I had to yell "Hel-LO!" at some bozo staring at his phone & not watching where he's walking? However, how would you regulate this? If you created a metric of "attention-sucking" and set a legal limit on it, the web giants would immediately game it.
It's easy to be right. But to be right is not the same as being useful.
"Easy to be right"?? Good to know. But why isn't everyone doing it, then?
Maybe you have a useful idea on regulating attention-sucking? Please share.
Re: A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)
#77Would this had ever existed if Apple did not start to protrct users fr the same problems?
Apple does not live from exploiting data as much as Google.
There is a lot of truth in all this. But there is even more marketing. Google is a corporation, and if Apple is doing something about it it's not bc they are good. It is bc they do not care about exploiting data as much. Because they are competing.
This proposal would have never existed without competition.
Re: A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
At the dawn of my career I made myself two commitments: 1. Only projects/companies you enjoy 2. Only projects/companies where users are the customers So far so good. It’s amazing the cool stuff you can build when engagement-at-all-cost is the opposite of your goal. When the goal is “Provide so much value users are beyond delighted to pay”. Feels nice to be aligned
I like your way of thinking. What companies do you think fit that goal?
B2B companies are an obvious example. Find expensive problem, solve it, add sales team. Iterate.
DDOG comes to mind as a recent very successful example. Salesforce as well. AWS falls into this category. As does Twilio. Huge huge space :)
Personally I like working on B2C SaaS. That path is harder.
B2C usually takes the shape of a freemium model. Strava is a good example here, as is Robinhood. Uber and Lyft are here also.
There’s also the indie/freelance market that sits between B2B and B2C – consumers who think of themselves as a business.
Examples here include ConvetKit, the Adobe suite, Quickbooks, Shopify, Teachable, etc. Again you’re charging users for value provided, based on the revenue they can generate using your platform.
I used to work for an EdTech company, that was nice. We had almost a gym membership model where we wanted you to use the app as little as possible to increase margins. Currently working with a health care startup and that’s taking off like a rocket.
Re: A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)
#79Presentations like these assume people are dumb animals not being able to control their lives. They need to artificially constrained to help them live. Saying bluntly, they need a nanny. I'm an active user or Google, Facebook, Apple, Twitter and all of them. I turned off GMail notifications for non-important mails. I unsubscribe/report spam promotional e-mail. YouTube autoplay is off (simply because the recommender i…
> That guy Tristan Harris who did the presentation is morally dishonest person: he wants to his cake and eat it. He got his millions from Google, and then decided to play good guy by virtue signalling with this presentation and by playing in Social Dilemma: working against the same companies which made him wealthy enough to not worry about money for the rest of his life.
This is like saying that no one is ever allowed to change their mind, and also that the person's point is wrong because they benefited by the very thing they are criticizing? That's not a logical argument, that's a straight-up ad hominem--character assassination, to be honest--and a complete distraction.
Re: A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)
#80This presentation is wonderful for its PR value "people here care" but naïve bordering on malicious in its approach and understanding of Google's business. 11 years ago PG called the iPad the "hip flask" of the internet (1) and it's 10x worse today than it was then. The incentives of every major ad-supported tech platform are the same - maximize engagement to maximize profit. Every dollar of profit, every promotion,…
This. In a long term, company will never do anything against incentives their business model sets up. Google is the ad company. Don't work for ad conpany.
But then if I don't work for Google, how can I write a blog post patting myself on the back for finally having the guts to leave Google?