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The Tyranny of the Marginal User

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Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#291

Post by ibbih »

JohnMakin wrote: post #267
brap wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's a bit more complex than that right? If no part of the user wanted this, it wouldn't drive up engagement. Clearly it causes me to use the product more. Companies can try to optimize for stuff like "satisfaction after using the product" but it's genuinely much harder -- and not tying work to business outcomes is not scalable.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#292

Post by [deleted] »

julianeon wrote: post #205
feoren wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That conclusion is not repugnant at all, it's just that its phrasing is so simplistic as to be nearly a straw-man. It's a poisoned intuition pump, because it makes you imagine a situation that doesn't follow at all from utilitarianism. First of all, you're imagining dividing happiness among more people, but imagining them all with the same amount of suffering. You're picturing a drudging life where people work all da…

Here's a simpler way to phrase the problem. The current world population is about 8 billion. By this argument, and also by your argument, it should actually be 999 billion. Or a number even higher than that. The conclusion boils down to: 1. Find maximum population number earth can support. 2. Hit that number. I do think that, when put this way, it seems simplistic.

[deleted]

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#294

Post by cyanydeez »

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…

What you describe is the capitalist perpetual September.

Long term you is less valuable than short term you.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#295

Post by dgudkov »

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…

The real problem is big-money-driven design. Big-money stakeholders don't care about non-measurable things like user experience or user well-being. Big money thinks finance, and finance is always metrics, so everything else becomes metrics too.

A brilliant essay.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#296

Post by hinkley »

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…

Worse, they loop through when you scroll horizontally and replace the thumbnails with new icons for the same shows, so you lose track of whether you’ve wrapped around or not.

I’ve been waiting for the day when we wake up and realize how cynical and impersonal the world of A/B testing is and consumers insist on better treatment.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#297

Post by hinkley »

JohnMakin wrote: post #266
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 curre…

Welcome to enshitification.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#298

Post by allarm »

manicennui wrote: post #99
vimax wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really want to spend your life adding dark patterns to a dating website?

Most things you can work on are equally bad, so why not? We all want to survive, and survival in America is expensive.

Mid-six figures have absolutely nothing to do with survival.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#299

Post by unoti »

The article says:

> Google Search itself, has decayed to the point of being unusable for complicated queries. Reddit and Craigslist remain incredibly useful and valuable precisely because their software remains frozen in time

I was contemplating the truth of this, and thinking about how much of the internet's wealth of useful content gets overshadowed by nonsense and UI antipatterns. It was right at this moment that I continued reading and scrolled down and the stuff I was trying to read got greyed out and replaced by one of those annoying popups about something or other before I could finish reading the article. Oh the irony...

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#300

Post by gnyman »

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…

Yes, and not only design, it's metrics-driven everything.

And often the metrics can be counter productive in the long term, but by then people have collected their bonuses, promotions or left the company.

Here is a example I encountered from few years back where Google Ads was loading slower then the search and ended up replacing the first result just when you were about to click it. https://twitter.com/gnyman/status/1257239940309622784

If it was intentional or not I don't know, but I recall that this persisted for many months before being fixed.

I think it's obvious (but maybe I'm wrong) that accidentally clicking on ads is not what google wants, long term. As that won't get any real results for the advertiser. Which in turn reduces their interest to spend. But short term I bet Google made a lot of buck on this.

Either way, maybe it's unavoidable in a capitalistic world, it's not like non-software companies were driven by a consumer happiness score before either. The reason it feels so bad is just that a lot of us have been here during the growth phase when end-user happiness is a more important metric.

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