Don't Give Your Users Shit Work • Hacker News Board

Re: Don't Give Your Users Shit Work

#21

Post by dos1 » Wed, Nov 02, 2011, 8:40 PM UTC

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #15

dos1 wrote: post #12

For one, I don't really feel like the expletive in the title helped his cause at all. A better title would have been "Facebook suggests groupings of your friends for you!" I also thought his example was contrived. I mean, is there anyone who's so worried about their social networks that they will hem and haw over whether someone is a coworker or drinking buddy or whatever? And if there is someone like that, well than…

Facebook also supports my "neuroses" [sic] too. And thankfully. I have tech friends, family, and high school friends that don't know what "linux" is. I like to share articles, a lot, for discussion. I'm "neurotic" because I like to target who I share that stuff with?

I just checked and the wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurosis uses the word "neuroses" as a plural several times. What is the correct way to spell this word if not the way I spelled it? (I'm genuinely curious)

Re: Don't Give Your Users Shit Work

#22

Post by steve8918 » Wed, Nov 02, 2011, 8:50 PM UTC

This is similar to the problem that Picasa has. Their facial recognition technology is really cool, but the work that I need to go through is so immensely tedious that I stopped bothering. Having to approve tens of thousands of faces just doesn't work. And then if you move the photo directory, you lose everything.

Re: Don't Give Your Users Shit Work

#23

Post by tomlin » Wed, Nov 02, 2011, 8:54 PM UTC

Absolutely right. I am finding that, especially with mobile, you have to really think about the design so that shit work is cut to a minimum. For example, I am in the process of making an iOS app, but it interfaces with an external appliance. I don't want to ask the user to input host, port, etc., so instead I'd much rather do the extra leg work and implement uPnP detection and then ask the user as a last resort. Apple has figured this out. 70% is in your face while the rest is within hands reach.

As an analogy, Circles is driving users to a brick wall hoping they will climb over to see what is the big deal is. Assuming they care. Assuming they aren't in the middle of something when they get the invite.

Which makes me think about the "Find My Friends" App on iOS. If Apple flipped the "social" switch, they would have creatively acquired a power which no other social network would be able to grasp without huge privacy backlash - knowledge of where you and all of your friends are at any given time. Here's the sell: You already have the app. How does this relate to shit work? Well, you'd be apart of a social network where you, your friends are already members, your latest photos are already there (iCloud), you know where your friends are and what they are doing - and you did very little work.

Re: Don't Give Your Users Shit Work

#24

Post by aprescott » Wed, Nov 02, 2011, 8:56 PM UTC

Pewpewarrows wrote: post #10

He's right in that Facebook was helpful by auto-creating certain "groups" of friends for you based on profile information. Where this completely breaks down is once you move past the trivial task of auto-populating categories for your location, school, and work. As I see it there are three modes of sharing: The first is where my post is quite innocent and generic, so I just want to declare it to the world. This goes…

Reading your three situations, I have another one which I've been thinking about: a post which is informative and in some way beneficial to the public, but which a significant portion of the people you know simply do not care about.

For example, you may have an excellent piece of commentary about the history of Unix and the state of X, Y, Z in modern operating system design. Most of your non-technical friends, along with your family, in all likelihood do not care about this and will not find it interesting, so it's just noise to them. If you post it publicly, it's worthwhile to the Internet at large, but annoying to a select group. If you post it so that only the relevant individuals see it, and no one else, then the public potentially lose out.

Is there a simple solution here which I'm just not seeing? Is there a social network that deals with this appropriately? With Facebook, you can "unsubscribe", which means hiding a user's posts from your feed, but that seems like overkill. How do prominent developers deal with this? Do they just make their posts more generic and mainstream, and move the technical discussion elsewhere? Or do they just let their non-technical friends and family Deal With It?

Perhaps one solution is to mark a post with "Family don't need to see this", then skip the post for anyone in Family who views their stream/feed/timeline/whatever, probably with an unobtrusive notice which says "post skipped". But then there's added complexity, and — getting back to Zach's main point — it's more shit work.

Re: Don't Give Your Users Shit Work

#25

Post by king_magic » Wed, Nov 02, 2011, 8:58 PM UTC

dos1 wrote: post #12

For one, I don't really feel like the expletive in the title helped his cause at all. A better title would have been "Facebook suggests groupings of your friends for you!" I also thought his example was contrived. I mean, is there anyone who's so worried about their social networks that they will hem and haw over whether someone is a coworker or drinking buddy or whatever? And if there is someone like that, well than…

I think it's a perfect example. Setting up Google+ Circles is a lot of work - work that I really wish I didn't have to do. And yes, there are plenty of people who have to be very careful about who sees what posts on social networks, especially when coworkers are involved.

Re: Don't Give Your Users Shit Work

#26

Post by lmkg » Wed, Nov 02, 2011, 8:59 PM UTC

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #6

Don't like Lists? Don't use them. I have almost a dozen lists on Facebook and I use them extensively (as if they're Circles basically). The only annoying thing is that Facebook decides to change my default publication privacy every time I publish to a specific list. I don't understand, are the features themselves bad? Who's forcing you to use Twitter lists, or Facebook lists, or even Circles?

I think you're reading the article from the wrong perspective. The author isn't speaking to the people using these features, he's speaking to the people making these features. From a user's perspective, you are absolutely correct. People can simply ignore features. In fact, many people do. From a developer's perspective, that's the problem: many people are not using the feature that you made. If people aren't using the feature, then it was a waste of time to implement it. The post is providing guidance towards making features that actually get used, and were therefore not a waste of time.

Re: Don't Give Your Users Shit Work

#27

Post by mightybyte » Wed, Nov 02, 2011, 8:59 PM UTC

Totally disagree. First, if you don't want to categorize, then don't--use one big circle. I actually want to have fine-grained control over who I publish to, and Facebook's auto-discovered groups touted in the article don't do it for me. The whole "Don't embrace the shit work" is not relevant either because you can't judge the value of a product by people who don't use it productively. BTW, Most time spent on Facebook period isn't REAL work. This is precisely why I don't have a Facebook account and don't spend tons of time on Google+. But circles are crucial to my use of Google+, and Facebook's lack of a good implementation of the idea is the reason I never used it.

Re: Don't Give Your Users Shit Work

#28

Post by lukev » Wed, Nov 02, 2011, 9:03 PM UTC

But, but... I like putting my friends into Venn diagrams.

Seriously. The 1 click it takes to put someone is a circle isn't really "work", and if it saves me awkward calls from my mom because she read a post intended for my drinking buddies, then it was well worth it.

Re: Don't Give Your Users Shit Work

#29

Post by ebzlo » Wed, Nov 02, 2011, 9:09 PM UTC

aprescott wrote: post #24

Pewpewarrows wrote: post #10

He's right in that Facebook was helpful by auto-creating certain "groups" of friends for you based on profile information. Where this completely breaks down is once you move past the trivial task of auto-populating categories for your location, school, and work. As I see it there are three modes of sharing: The first is where my post is quite innocent and generic, so I just want to declare it to the world. This goes…

Reading your three situations, I have another one which I've been thinking about: a post which is informative and in some way beneficial to the public, but which a significant portion of the people you know simply do not care about. For example, you may have an excellent piece of commentary about the history of Unix and the state of X, Y, Z in modern operating system design. Most of your non-technical friends, along…

While I find the use case relevant, I think ultimately, the point is that a post like that simply does not belong on Facebook. Sure one could argue that you should be able to post whatever you want, but the reason it seems so convoluted and confusing is because you've made it that way.

A post like that belongs on a blog. I like to think of a blog a place for people to learn about a specific topic. Facebook is for people trying to learn about people.

Re: Don't Give Your Users Shit Work

#30

Post by dprice1 » Wed, Nov 02, 2011, 9:15 PM UTC

I use twitter lists, in part because Tweetdeck makes them easy to view. I like to follow the various food trucks around town, but usually I am only interested in them when hungry. Having them collected in a list keeps them out of my main feed.

They are a pain to maintain, however.