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

The Tyranny of the Marginal User

nothinghuman.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 840 posts

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#261

Post by evouga »

AlbertCory wrote: post #118

A great article. "Growth" is the culprit. "What if we just acted like the successful restaurant: packed every night, very profitable, solid employment for my kids?" Nah. We have to keep growing.

It's not so easy for several reasons:

1. It's easy enough for a lone entrepreneur with no investors to make principled long-term decisions. It's not so trivial when you owe a fiduciary duty to a board of venture capitalists.

2. Your team of engineers (which has grown steadily as you've scaled up) have built The Thing and everyone loves it. Now what? You only need 5% of the team to maintain the software. You could fire 95% of the team, which will make your company mighty unpopular to future hires, and moreover your best developers won't want to stay and do maintenance for the next decade. Easier to have them work on gratuitous frontend redesigns, bloated features that increase engagement metrics, etc. In a restaurant the contractors who build and furnish the place aren't your employees.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#262

Post by egonschiele »

mrshoe wrote: post #258

The real problem is industry-wide adoption of metrics-driven design. When I studied cognitive science, the method we employed for HCI was User Centered System Design. Granted, this was a backronym for UCSD, but the point remains — design should be user-centered, not metrics-driven. When I launch Netflix, it is abundantly clear to me that their design is driven by their metrics. What I want to see at the top is my “co…

I agree with everything except the last bit. I have purchases on Apple TV, and I'm not a subscriber, but when I launch the app, all I see is subscriber-only content. Apple Music is similar.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#263

Post by mhb »

wilg wrote: post #197
mhb wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a comparison. If the scale goes from -100 to +100, the conclusion is that if we have 8 billion people in the world with average happiness of +10, it is better to immiserate them in order to have 80 billion with average happiness +1.01. It's not that the acceptable state of 1.01 is repugnant, it's that the conclusion seems counterintuitive and ethically problematic to many people, as it suggests that we should…

I guess I just don't understand how if your axioms are 1) X is an acceptable level of happiness and 2) more people are better than fewer it is in any way surprising or problematic to end up with infinite people at happiness X. Perhaps people don't see that (2) is a part of the premise?

Because 1 is not one of the axioms. The axioms are 1) There is a range of experience between worst possible misery and best possible happiness and 2) more people who are just barely happy is better than fewer people who are much happier.

I don't understand why you're insisting on a binary distinction of acceptable vs. not acceptable. With that assumption there is no repugnant conclusion.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#264

Post by brap »

mrshoe wrote: post #258

The real problem is industry-wide adoption of metrics-driven design. When I studied cognitive science, the method we employed for HCI was User Centered System Design. Granted, this was a backronym for UCSD, but the point remains — design should be user-centered, not metrics-driven. When I launch Netflix, it is abundantly clear to me that their design is driven by their metrics. What I want to see at the top is my “co…

You assume that your goals are aligned with the company’s goals. They’re not. There is no “problem”, it’s all working as intended.

From the company’s point of view, they actually are doing the right thing. They’re making money (which, I’d argue, is ultimately a good thing for everyone involved).

Netflix and Apple are no different, the goal is always $$, Apple just sells different things.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#265

Post by AshamedCaptain »

WD40forRust wrote: post #254

At risk of an avalanche of knee-jerk downvotes, I will suggest this angle: 'Inclusivity' is in vogue. It's a meme (Dawkins) which is so deep into the psyches of normies today it integrates into everything. Normie is the fish and inclusivity is the water. What I think is being left on the side lines is 'exclusivity' not in class of product, but in intended customer. "KDE 3.5 is an advanced product, it was not meant fo…

This article is precisely pointing that behind this "inclusivity" trend there is a pervasive _economic_ reason , which directly contradicts what you are implying (that it's a "meme in the psyches of normies").

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#266

Post by JohnMakin »

mrshoe wrote: post #258

The real problem is industry-wide adoption of metrics-driven design. When I studied cognitive science, the method we employed for HCI was User Centered System Design. Granted, this was a backronym for UCSD, but the point remains — design should be user-centered, not metrics-driven. When I launch Netflix, it is abundantly clear to me that their design is driven by their metrics. What I want to see at the top is my “co…

This brings to mind my experience as an early facebook adopter (when it was still college email invite-only), to some point a while ago when they went from a chronological timeline/feed to a "curated" one. Users overwhelmingly did not want or like this, because the main use of facebook at that time was to connect and chat with people you knew in real life. However, that does not drive ads as well as what exists currently, so here we go.

If users were pickier about what they consume things would probably be better - that's also an issue (and I admit I am part of the problem). I can't even remember the last time I saw a close friend's post on my feed.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#267

Post by JohnMakin »

brap wrote: post #264
mrshoe wrote: post #258

The real problem is industry-wide adoption of metrics-driven design. When I studied cognitive science, the method we employed for HCI was User Centered System Design. Granted, this was a backronym for UCSD, but the point remains — design should be user-centered, not metrics-driven. When I launch Netflix, it is abundantly clear to me that their design is driven by their metrics. What I want to see at the top is my “co…

You assume that your goals are aligned with the company’s goals. They’re not. There is no “problem”, it’s all working as intended. From the company’s point of view, they actually are doing the right thing. They’re making money (which, I’d argue, is ultimately a good thing for everyone involved). Netflix and Apple are no different, the goal is always $$, Apple just sells different things.

No, he's saying the exact opposite - that the company's revenue-driven goals and the user's goals are not in alignment. It is definitely possible for those things to be in alignment, that's how products have worked for the majority of modern human history.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#268

Post by nelblu »

mrshoe wrote: post #258

The real problem is industry-wide adoption of metrics-driven design. When I studied cognitive science, the method we employed for HCI was User Centered System Design. Granted, this was a backronym for UCSD, but the point remains — design should be user-centered, not metrics-driven. When I launch Netflix, it is abundantly clear to me that their design is driven by their metrics. What I want to see at the top is my “co…

For netflix : I only watch it on my browser (my TV is basically a monitor connected to a PC), and the way I work around is by having a bookmark : https://www.netflix.com/browse/continue-watching Problem solved! (well until netflix starts blocking that too, in that case I might as well delete their membership)

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#269

Post by agumonkey »

mrshoe wrote: post #258

The real problem is industry-wide adoption of metrics-driven design. When I studied cognitive science, the method we employed for HCI was User Centered System Design. Granted, this was a backronym for UCSD, but the point remains — design should be user-centered, not metrics-driven. When I launch Netflix, it is abundantly clear to me that their design is driven by their metrics. What I want to see at the top is my “co…

Do these fields care about depth and worth-done efforts from a user ? this decade is about giving everything for free, consumption flow effortlessly, which is obvious a good point to aim, but I remember the things I liked the most are those which made me work a little to make complex things. And I can't find recent advances on this terrain.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#270

Post by PeterisP »

autoexec wrote: post #179
freedomben wrote: post #6

> Here’s what I’ve been able to piece together about the marginal user. Let’s call him Marl. The first thing you need to know about Marl is that he has the attention span of a goldfish on acid. Once Marl opens your app, you have about 1.3 seconds to catch his attention with a shiny image or triggering headline, otherwise he’ll swipe back to TikTok and never open your app again. This is hilarious and sad because it fe…

> Once Marl opens your app, you have about 1.3 seconds to catch his attention with a shiny image or triggering headline, otherwise he’ll swipe back to TikTok and never open your app again. If this were true, the app probably wasn't worth having in the first place. An app that actually does something Marl needs, or enables him to do something he wants to do doesn't need to catch his attention with shiny things. The th…

If the app actually does something Marl needs or enables him to do something he wants to do, then that's great, but all that means Marl simply isn't the marginal user for that app that the article is talking about, he's a core user of it - and there exists some other user, let's call him Narl, who has slightly different needs than Marl, doesn't really need that app, but would use it if you catch his attention in those 1.3 seconds, so he actually is the marginal user for that app.

And if the app does the things you want for Marl, then, as the article states, it makes all economic sense to make the app worse for Marl to catch Narl. Marl will use it anyway (since for him the app was worth having in the first place), but your effort will make a difference in getting Narl.

And if you can make the app really good for Narl as well, that doesn't change anything, because there always will be another marginal user, and there is a financial motivation to add all the shiny bullshit (at the expense of everyone else) to catch that marginal user.

Post reply on HN