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

Scientists who make apps addictive

1843magazine.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–49 of 49 posts

Re: Scientists who make apps addictive

#41

Post by ken »

panic wrote: post #10
netcan wrote: post #4

The development of online software over the last 10-15 years is a case study in feedback loops. It really has flipped the paradigm. For lotus notes, success is when a user makes the software do what she wants, like sending an email. In the modern equivalent, the software (designer) succeeds, when the user does what the software wants, like sending an email.

This is a symptom of detailed metrics. When you're responsible for the "send an email" feature, you want to show you're doing your job. Getting more people to send email is an easy way to show progress without having to understand people's actual experience with the feature.

I would say it's a symptom of bad management. Why do you need to "show you're doing your job", if the feature clearly exists and works? Why do you need to cause it to be used more, too?

I don't see this happening in other industries. Do people responsible for radios or sunroofs or seat belts in cars take action to cause their features to be used more?

Re: Scientists who make apps addictive

#42

Post by PavlovsCat »

jerrre wrote: post #7
koliber wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every UI presents an opinion. In many cases, that opinion is unclear, muddled, or counterintuitive. As developers and designers pay more attention to the UX, that opinion becomes more clear and unilateral. In the end, the decision to like a piece of software or website depends on how well your expectations align with the opinion that the UI expresses. If you feel manipulated, it means that you did not want to do some…

I think a big differences is between a) tools for professionals/experts where the assumption is the user knows best what it wants, and will spend time figuring out how to reach it b) the instagram/autotune etc kind of tools that make everyone feel like an expert without doing the work, by providing very nice results for very little effort, but as a user you will very quickly run into the limititions when you form you…

> If people could understand what computing was about, the iPhone would not be a bad thing. But because people don’t understand what computing is about, they think they have it in the iPhone, and that illusion is as bad as the illusion that Guitar Hero is the same as a real guitar.

-- Alan Kay

Re: Scientists who make apps addictive

#44

Post by maxxxxx »

mental1896 wrote: post #33
ryandrake wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at the path “configuration defaults” have taken. Whenever software has settings or can do things multiple ways, there is usually a default out-of-the-box setting. Long time ago, the default was often whatever was easiest to program or took up the fewest compute resources: the variable is zero initialized by the OS, so therefore the setting will default to off. Then, the rule became: the default should be the way…

On the bright side, the more restrictive these apps become, the more susceptible they become to competition.

That doesn't really seem to happen though.

Re: Scientists who make apps addictive

#45

Post by TeMPOraL »

panic wrote: post #10
netcan wrote: post #4

The development of online software over the last 10-15 years is a case study in feedback loops. It really has flipped the paradigm. For lotus notes, success is when a user makes the software do what she wants, like sending an email. In the modern equivalent, the software (designer) succeeds, when the user does what the software wants, like sending an email.

This is a symptom of detailed metrics. When you're responsible for the "send an email" feature, you want to show you're doing your job. Getting more people to send email is an easy way to show progress without having to understand people's actual experience with the feature.

I don't think it's about "showing you're doing your job", but it very much is about metrics.

Imagine your metrics are perfect. Think of what your goal is: to get that sweet $$$. Using metrics, you'll tune your app towards extracting as much value as possible from customer. Note that it's different from providing value to customer in exchange for money - the latter is just an early stage of the former, and as you optimize further (using your perfect metrics), the only way to squeeze out more profit is to start making user's life worse.

Re: Scientists who make apps addictive

#46

Post by TeMPOraL »

jerrre wrote: post #7
koliber wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every UI presents an opinion. In many cases, that opinion is unclear, muddled, or counterintuitive. As developers and designers pay more attention to the UX, that opinion becomes more clear and unilateral. In the end, the decision to like a piece of software or website depends on how well your expectations align with the opinion that the UI expresses. If you feel manipulated, it means that you did not want to do some…

I think a big differences is between a) tools for professionals/experts where the assumption is the user knows best what it wants, and will spend time figuring out how to reach it b) the instagram/autotune etc kind of tools that make everyone feel like an expert without doing the work, by providing very nice results for very little effort, but as a user you will very quickly run into the limititions when you form you…

> which is nice because it can increase power and productivity for everyone, but the experts and pro's are left behind

It's not nice overall, because as those b) tools push out a) tools, it creates an artificial ceiling. Sure, it may be nice to enable a random person to do a new thing for the first time in their lives, but it's not nice if your software prevents those who want to do that thing more than once from being able to do it faster and better. Toys are more approachable than tools, but good works happens with tools; when almost all software tools become toy-like, we have a problem.

Re: Scientists who make apps addictive

#47

Post by com2kid »

As an aside, my previous team went through Fogg's course on feature planning. It is truly a unique way to get stakeholder buy in on planned work. We went from planning meetings that involved shouting matches to meetings where everyone left happy.

Re: Scientists who make apps addictive

#48

Post by bvxvbxbxb »

Captology and behavior design are, to a degree, marketing wank that sells courses, lectures, speeches, books and consulting gigs... because it's fluffy idealism PR people want to buy into. Sure you can fool most of the people some of the time, a few of the people all of the time, but you can never...

Re: Scientists who make apps addictive

#49

Post by xte »

staplers wrote: post #39
xte wrote: post #3

Hum, mumble mumble... I may have experimented something like that, having become an Emacs addicted... But I'm sure enough that no Emacs devs work with such theory in mind :-) Maybe I also have a rebound effect against certain platforms/apps/digital jails... How many sharing this around here? Anyway, seriously: in the history we (as society) learn to distinguish good and bad things, generally the hard way, we develop…

Makes you wonder if a jail can be called such if it is made "fun". Eventually the need to maintain "fun" disappears if no options to leave are present.

It's depend on scale: if prisoners are few there is no need to make anything fun; if prisoners are an enormous amount of people and guards are a little group keep prisoners calm it's needed to avoid revolts.

Panem et circense always pay, at least as long as people can survive or have a bit of something to loose.

Post reply on HN