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Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

dcurt.is

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Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#21

Post by pavel_lishin »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #19

What I take from this is that Dustin Curtis plays Farmville and is a member of a shadowy group named "secret group". Actually, the question of the piece is a good one. It's really about what you're optimizing for. As every halfway decent manager knows, you get what you measure. Which means deciding what to measure is one of the most important decisions you can make. So, in this case, do you measure user engagement ti…

> Which means deciding what to measure is one of the most important decisions you can make.

Sounds like we should be measuring our decisions about what to measure!

Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#22

Post by mathattack »

swombat wrote: post #4

Of course, because money is the only criteria that is important to any business. There couldn't possibly be anything else, like a sense of mission or purpose, that could inform decisions.

Once you take outside money, you have to give up the sense of purpose if it conflicts with collecting money.

This is more an issue of optimization versus long term vision. Some firms can act like Apple, ignore feedback, and invent the future. That's very rare. The rest must react to feedback.

Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#25

Post by grey-area »

This really reminds me of the depressing way that Google optimised the blue colour of a button, while ignoring all other considerations:

http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html

If you trust your metrics and nothing else, you have to be very sure that your metrics encompass every aspect of the reality you are modelling. If they just tell you about clicks and sales, they might be missing longer-term objectives like user satisfaction and retention.

Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#26

Post by corresation »

This sounds contrived. Being the skeptical sort we should all be, there is no reason to believe the sources (if you believe they exist) regarding supposed cynical reasons they didn't proceed with a considered UI.

Maybe Facebook found that people really actually liked the other variant better? Or maybe they were just ambivalent about it, and if we've learned anything about widely deployed social media sites, it's that you need a really, really good reason to change things.

And to add just a bit more on the "contrived" notion: My Facebook feed looks very similar to the first page, with big, colourful pictures dominating my news food. If my network had people posting short twitter-like missives, I suppose it would look like that. Outside of trivial CSS differences, the only real variation is that I don't have the confusing iconography down the left, instead using that massive area of white space for descriptive text.

Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#27

Post by ploxiln »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #19

What I take from this is that Dustin Curtis plays Farmville and is a member of a shadowy group named "secret group". Actually, the question of the piece is a good one. It's really about what you're optimizing for. As every halfway decent manager knows, you get what you measure. Which means deciding what to measure is one of the most important decisions you can make. So, in this case, do you measure user engagement ti…

And there's things you can't measure, like long-term reputation and habit forming. I think long-term reputation is how a lot of good startups become successful against big, organized, optimizing companies.

Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#29

Post by akamaka »

Nice theory, but I think Dustin's conclusions are wrong.

I got to use this alternative design on my second Facebook account that I used for app development, while my personal account didn't have it enabled. I really disliked like the new sidebar design. The concept was similar to what GMail has done lately, with text links replaced by only graphical icons. I found it really difficult to remember what each icon linked to, and I'd have to go through and hover over each icon one by one.

My theory (which I think has as much evidence to back it up as Dustin's) is that if the feed performed better in this design, it was because the poorly designed menu made it more difficult to navigate the rest of the site!

Re: Whatever goes up, that’s what we do

#30

Post by nemothekid »

thisishugo wrote: post #9

It baffles me that businesses such as Facebook seem to be driven so heavily by the numbers. If I were the FB product manager given the choice between a News Feed that is pleasant to use, or one that at times feels actively user-hostile but provides better metrics, I would want to have the freedom to pick user happiness over the bottom line, in no small part because I would (I assume) be one of those users. I can't he…

>will deliver its users a worse product for the sake of few more dollars

Its hard - we don't know if its a "few" more dollars, the article and facebook doesn't share this info. If it possibly meant that each user was spending half as much time on facebook, which could possibly meant half as much revenue for the company - what choice do you have?

As a product manager, are you willing to graze half of company because a new feature that is pretty, but costs the company a fortune?

Arguably there are those who have considered the iPhone a worse product because of its locked down nature. Does Apple deliver a worse product for the sake of a "few more dollars?" Even then you have to consider is the App Store ecosystem, the relatively high quality of iPhone Apps, and ease-of-use-through-handcuffs just worth a few more dollars?

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