Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)

minimizedistraction.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 285 posts

Re: A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)

#251

Post by majewsky »

Talanes wrote: post #250
gfxgirl wrote: post #235

The distraction of notifications, or "sign up for our email news letter" distractions I'm certainly against. But, the fact of having my time wasted (getting a notification I don't care about) has highlighted other things that waste my time such as Movies that start with 1-3 minutes of company logos. An animation of "A Scott Free Production", followed by an animated logo of "Bad Robot", followed by yet another animate…

I'm a little surprised you didn't mention the production cards that pop up when you start a game. Those are the worst offender; especially the ones that are unskippable or require a separate button press to skip each of the multiple title cards. Anything other than a single button press to reach the start screen is excessive.

I don't know any ones that require a button press, but usually those are unskippable because the game is loading in the meantime.

Re: A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)

#252

Post by Talanes »

majewsky wrote: post #251
Talanes wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a little surprised you didn't mention the production cards that pop up when you start a game. Those are the worst offender; especially the ones that are unskippable or require a separate button press to skip each of the multiple title cards. Anything other than a single button press to reach the start screen is excessive.

I don't know any ones that require a button press, but usually those are unskippable because the game is loading in the meantime.

Digging for a specific memory, I realized I might just be angry that my favorite childhood game made me click past a PSA about vandalism between the production logo and start screen.

Re: A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)

#253

Post by pnt12 »

soumyadeb wrote: post #199
an1sotropy wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thanks for this info. I recognize him now from the Social Dilemma movie.

Watching "Social Dilemma" on Netflix (a movie made by Netflix) was quite an irony. Most people "waste" more time on Netflix than all other social platforms combined. Yet, "Social Dilemma" covered/blamed every company except Netflix :)

I'd argue that the value you get from a movie or TV show is higher than social media posts or memes, so it's not an apples to apples comparison.

Re: A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)

#255

Post by relativ575 »

Stratoscope wrote: post #143
Zelphyr wrote: post #90

All I've heard for the past 12+ years is "engagement". The singular focus on that one word to the exclusion of everything else is astounding to me. As if it is some magic incantation on the part of BizDev (or whatever they're called these days) that instantly transmogrifies users into profits. At one company I worked at, we had a digital product that was part of a suite of services our company provided. It was useful…

I hate "engagement". I am a weird person. When I used to go to a movie theater, I stayed and watched the credits at the end. There would be some closing music, and maybe a few outtakes. It was always interesting to see how many people it took to make a movie and what they all did. A nice way to unwind and acknowledge everyone who created the movie. Lately I've been watching The Sopranos on Amazon. As soon as the end…

> It pisses me off every time! If I were Tony Soprano, I'd be tempted to hit that corner of the screen with a pointed heavy object just to make it stop haunting me: "You really want to watch the next episode right now. You do NOT want to sit quietly and enjoy the end credits and the cool music the showrunner chose."

Sorry that's me. I click Next Episode as soon as possible when binge watching, or exit if it's a movie. Occasionally I watch the credits when I want to know more about the actors/actresses, or music, or script. But only rarely.

I guess you're the minority. Amazon cater to the majority, as they should, although perhaps it should be longer than five secs.

Re: A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)

#256

Post by jpadkins »

dredmorbius wrote: post #194
sillysaurusx wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Criminalization of dark patterns? It’s not impossible to imagine — intentionally tricking a user is sometimes called fraud — but I’m not sure we’ve thought through the implications of criminalizing website design. The biggest companies are the ones least affected by regulation, because they can invest resources into complying. Small startups sometimes can’t. A teenager in their bedroom usually can’t. And that’s no sm…

The scale argument against regulation is a frequent one. I'd like to see regulation have specific mandates for increased responsibility with size. There are examples of this elsewhere, e.g., exceptions from food inspecition and licensing regulations for home cooks, even for sales at relatively informal markets such as farmers' markets. http://www.fma.alabama.gov/HomeProc.aspx The case for the Internet is an interesti…

> (often with a gross ignorance of the issues involved in hair care, beauty treatments, and hygiene).

wait.. you seriously going to defend hairdresser regulations? Care to enlightenment me on why they are a net good for society? I always thought they are a punching bag for libertarians because they are such an obvious net negative for society...

Re: A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)

#257

Post by matheusmoreira »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #173
dredmorbius wrote: post #157

In the 8 years that have elapsed since this pitch was made at Google, one conclusion is absolutely crystal clear: the industry has as little self-regulatory control over its use of such dark patterns as the public has over avoiding them. Regulation, taxation, and where necessary, criminalisation, are obvious and necessary. I'll note that for once, the patterns are not entirely synonymous with massive tech monopolies,…

Criminalization of dark patterns? It’s not impossible to imagine — intentionally tricking a user is sometimes called fraud — but I’m not sure we’ve thought through the implications of criminalizing website design. The biggest companies are the ones least affected by regulation, because they can invest resources into complying. Small startups sometimes can’t. A teenager in their bedroom usually can’t. And that’s no sm…

Just apply harsher standards the bigger the scale. Billion dollar corporations should be subjected to a lot more scrutiny than teenagers in their bedrooms. These two are not equal and must not be treated equally in matters of law.

Re: A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)

#258

Post by matheusmoreira »

gfxgirl wrote: post #235

The distraction of notifications, or "sign up for our email news letter" distractions I'm certainly against. But, the fact of having my time wasted (getting a notification I don't care about) has highlighted other things that waste my time such as Movies that start with 1-3 minutes of company logos. An animation of "A Scott Free Production", followed by an animated logo of "Bad Robot", followed by yet another animate…

> The same with both movie trailers and game trailers. I go to see the game trailer and there's 30 seconds to 2 minutes of logos.

> They aren't respecting my time.

Imagine going to a movie theather, paying to watch a film, only to be subjected to over 15 minutes of trailers for other movies and advertising for local businesses before what I want to watch finally starts. I don't go there anymore.

Re: A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)

#259

Post by jpadkins »

beachy wrote: post #126
Zelphyr wrote: post #90

All I've heard for the past 12+ years is "engagement". The singular focus on that one word to the exclusion of everything else is astounding to me. As if it is some magic incantation on the part of BizDev (or whatever they're called these days) that instantly transmogrifies users into profits. At one company I worked at, we had a digital product that was part of a suite of services our company provided. It was useful…

In a similar vein, I've discussed with customers why it's not a good idea to slavishly follow conversions, in our case on our hosted corporate careers site product. If job seekers are not well matched to a job, then we don't want them applying (i.e. a conversion)! That wastes everyone's time and good will. Instead, we want them to leave the process as quickly as possible. It's not unknown to have one person at the cu…

one could argue that your conversions are not defined well enough. Define conversion as a qualified lead. Or define conversion as a job application that results in a callback. Then you can go back to obsessing over conversions :-) Not enough people push back when a bad KPI is set.

Re: A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)

#260

Post by jpadkins »

acituan wrote: post #224
madrox wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The difference with the TV is that TV didn't have individual, high granularity demographic and usage data to conform to its users' most exploitable side that ultimately drives mindless "engagement". TV ratings had coarsely sampled data at household levels and whatever broadcast was what everyone saw. I agree. I fail to see how what we have now is inherently worse...especially for cultural minorities. Exploiting psy…

> I fail to see how what we have now is inherently worse...especially for cultural minorities. Exploiting psychological weakness to keep people's attention goes back a long, long way. That's never going away The "attack surface", so to speak, is larger with individualized content consumption. With TV at max we have N channels that can broadcast N different viewpoints with the intention to rile M people up, at most in…

> As for hard evidence, we could use non-work screen time as a proxy,

To play devil's advocate, screen play time (i.e. video games) has inspired a whole generation of computer engineers to follow this career. I would argue that screen play time is essential to a child's development in the 21st century, and is just as valid as 'outside' play time or 'social' play time. Of course, all things in moderation still applies.

Post reply on HN