7 ms·

Scientists who make apps addictive

227 points by sdeepak 8y ago

lihaciudaniel 8y ago
Also on the infamous game: https://youtu.be/tqG74aI9t3Q https://youtu.be/tqG74aI9t3Q Studying psychology intensively as a lay person can say this game is genius.
xte 8y ago
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 society-antibodies for many "bad things". Unfortunately actual rapid growth of corporatocracy, while it's not nothing new under the sun, it's evolved quicker than society capacity to metabolize it and that's a real big danger for us all. At nazi times it's easy to identify "the enemy" if someone go bomb you, go invade your country, have clear uniforms, symbols, clearly state that want to dominate the world it's easy to understand that's not good. But "new enemies" learned that well, they suppress symbols, they ceased to appear a unique body (of course, they are not, but even original nazi are not a unique body, have had they internal fight etc) they do not say they want to conquer anything but only "having success", like anybody want... Well for the mean, typical biped that's not much evident. Especially since actual "humans" disappear being presented as "platforms" with unclear propriety, with tons of different commercial brands that belong to a sole subject but most people do not know or if they appear in person they present themself as "genius in it's lab", young happy hippy that "work for a better world". And even worse, ancient dictatorship require strong power to stay and evolve, actual corporatocracy do not. They simply remains as the sole option to buy services or products. They do not have to prohibit something "free" like open PCs, open cars etc, they simply stop to produce them after having bought any possible other producer, substituting them with jails but well presented, well colored and of course "for our safety".
- staplers 8y ago
  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.
  - xte 8y ago
    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.
netcan 8y ago
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.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  Nicely said. This really summarizes how I feel when I use a lot of modern websites. I often feel manipulated. Instead of me driving the interaction the website tries to impose its opinion on what I need or want.
  - koliber 8y ago
    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 something, but the UI expressed its opinion in a way that was strong enough for you to notice it. If the UI expresses its opinion in a way that aligns with your intentions, it gets called easy-to-use, unobtrussive, frictionless, and other nice-to-hear words.
    - jerrre 8y ago
      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 your own opinion. Many tools that used to be a) now are becoming b) which is nice because it can increase power and productivity for everyone, but the experts and pro's are left behind... What's even worse for them is these simplified tools are often not created by domain experts...
Inu 8y ago
I think the general danger with computers is falling into a trap of repetitive behavior. In the age of letters you'd check your letter box maybe once a day. Now everywhere we have systems of immediate responses. It creates these loops of repetition where the constant stream of new data drives the user to be constantly aware of the possibility to respond and consume. What if letters could arrive at your home invisibly, at any time, without you knowing it? The problem with technology seems to be that when things become too easy, they often seem to acquire a potential of being destructive in a way that they hadn't before.
- Uberphallus 8y ago
  That's the first thing I do when I get a new phone: set up mail and usual apps, disable notifications for most, notify every 4 hours for mail & others, though I usually leave instant messaging run regularly. Also my phone is most of the time in do not disturb, only calls go through. At the beginning I kept checking, but eventually the need dies off, at least in my case. Anything actually important will be a call.
  - avgDev 8y ago
    Never really thought about this....but this would really increase my productivity. I get super annoyed when my wife keeps messaging me at work for example, but I also respond all the time. Disabling notification for few hours at a time is a great idea. I will give it a shot.
    - wayne_skylar 8y ago
      I do the same thing. Calls go through as normal and messages get checked when I feel like it. There have been a few occasions when I miss out on something or whatever but it's way better my phone dictating when I give it attention rather than the other way around.
gaius 8y ago
I don’t use FB myself anymore but my wife still does and this morning she showed me some posts by a friend of ours. He’s... troubled anyway, but recently he seems to have become addicted to self-harming and posting the photos on FB for the reactions and comments. Congratulations, FB scientists, this is your contribution to the world.
- all2 8y ago
  Their contribution is profiting from his self harm, which is worse in some ways.
  - wasdfff 8y ago
    How do these researchers justify such a lack of empathy in their product? If I worked for a company that makes a product that does objective harm to society, like Facebook or a missile, I would feel like I wasted years of my life as I would be giving great effort to something where the outcome can only be regression, not improvement of anyone’s life. Exploiting these behavioral feedback loops for profit is cruel and dystopian. I already feel terribly for all the people I encounter who could be so much more focused on their own ambitions if they weren’t spending 4+ hours a day trapped in the infinite scroll of social media. I know how much of a setback that kind of addiction can be, because it used to be me.
    - okmokmz 8y ago
      >How do these researchers justify such a lack of empathy in their product? $$$$ and/or personality disorders I imagine
      - all2 8y ago
        Willful ignorance or cognitive dissonance may also explain some of this. See Nazi Germany: citizens knew something was going on, but they willed the whispering away.
quarkral 8y ago
I think recommender systems are the biggest culprit in this. Most recommender systems are probably trained with a simple objective of maximizing the amount of time the user spends browsing through the list of recommended items. The whole idea of continuously giving your users content so that they can passively scroll down and be entertained is just like putting users in a box where they can pull a lever to get food. When users are given all these options without having to think and to actively search for them, they just become vegetables.
metaos 8y ago
I read the title as "maps" not apps. I'll continue to wonder why I like maps so much...
piyh 8y ago
I found this youtube talk a while back. It's given by a consultant who's selling these skills and has slides titled "Use of coercive monitization". Some of the more disturbing parts are when he highlights forum posts about targeting whales and people who say things like "I have to do every challenge and every side quest and it takes away from my enjoyment of the game" and "I've restarted this game hundreds of times because my character isn't perfect". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zex3b2mDnUw&t=17m16s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zex3b2mDnUw&t=17m16s
Viki789 8y ago
Interesting article! Of course, scientists should work on the topic as the app developers want to attract as many users as possible. Everything is in our heads!
com2kid 8y ago
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.
bvxvbxbxb 8y ago
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...

227 points by sdeepak 8y ago

Also on the infamous game: https://youtu.be/tqG74aI9t3Q https://youtu.be/tqG74aI9t3Q Studying psychology intensively as a lay person can say this game is genius.

xte 8y ago

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 society-antibodies for many "bad things". Unfortunately actual rapid growth of corporatocracy, while it's not nothing new under the sun, it's evolved quicker than society capacity to metabolize it and that's a real big danger for us all. At nazi times it's easy to identify "the enemy" if someone go bomb you, go invade your country, have clear uniforms, symbols, clearly state that want to dominate the world it's easy to understand that's not good. But "new enemies" learned that well, they suppress symbols, they ceased to appear a unique body (of course, they are not, but even original nazi are not a unique body, have had they internal fight etc) they do not say they want to conquer anything but only "having success", like anybody want... Well for the mean, typical biped that's not much evident. Especially since actual "humans" disappear being presented as "platforms" with unclear propriety, with tons of different commercial brands that belong to a sole subject but most people do not know or if they appear in person they present themself as "genius in it's lab", young happy hippy that "work for a better world". And even worse, ancient dictatorship require strong power to stay and evolve, actual corporatocracy do not. They simply remains as the sole option to buy services or products. They do not have to prohibit something "free" like open PCs, open cars etc, they simply stop to produce them after having bought any possible other producer, substituting them with jails but well presented, well colored and of course "for our safety".

staplers 8y ago
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.
- xte 8y ago
  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.

netcan 8y ago

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.

maxxxxx 8y ago
Nicely said. This really summarizes how I feel when I use a lot of modern websites. I often feel manipulated. Instead of me driving the interaction the website tries to impose its opinion on what I need or want.
- koliber 8y ago
  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 something, but the UI expressed its opinion in a way that was strong enough for you to notice it. If the UI expresses its opinion in a way that aligns with your intentions, it gets called easy-to-use, unobtrussive, frictionless, and other nice-to-hear words.
  - jerrre 8y ago
    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 your own opinion. Many tools that used to be a) now are becoming b) which is nice because it can increase power and productivity for everyone, but the experts and pro's are left behind... What's even worse for them is these simplified tools are often not created by domain experts...

Inu 8y ago

I think the general danger with computers is falling into a trap of repetitive behavior. In the age of letters you'd check your letter box maybe once a day. Now everywhere we have systems of immediate responses. It creates these loops of repetition where the constant stream of new data drives the user to be constantly aware of the possibility to respond and consume. What if letters could arrive at your home invisibly, at any time, without you knowing it? The problem with technology seems to be that when things become too easy, they often seem to acquire a potential of being destructive in a way that they hadn't before.

Uberphallus 8y ago
That's the first thing I do when I get a new phone: set up mail and usual apps, disable notifications for most, notify every 4 hours for mail & others, though I usually leave instant messaging run regularly. Also my phone is most of the time in do not disturb, only calls go through. At the beginning I kept checking, but eventually the need dies off, at least in my case. Anything actually important will be a call.
- avgDev 8y ago
  Never really thought about this....but this would really increase my productivity. I get super annoyed when my wife keeps messaging me at work for example, but I also respond all the time. Disabling notification for few hours at a time is a great idea. I will give it a shot.
  - wayne_skylar 8y ago
    I do the same thing. Calls go through as normal and messages get checked when I feel like it. There have been a few occasions when I miss out on something or whatever but it's way better my phone dictating when I give it attention rather than the other way around.

gaius 8y ago

I don’t use FB myself anymore but my wife still does and this morning she showed me some posts by a friend of ours. He’s... troubled anyway, but recently he seems to have become addicted to self-harming and posting the photos on FB for the reactions and comments. Congratulations, FB scientists, this is your contribution to the world.

all2 8y ago
Their contribution is profiting from his self harm, which is worse in some ways.
- wasdfff 8y ago
  How do these researchers justify such a lack of empathy in their product? If I worked for a company that makes a product that does objective harm to society, like Facebook or a missile, I would feel like I wasted years of my life as I would be giving great effort to something where the outcome can only be regression, not improvement of anyone’s life. Exploiting these behavioral feedback loops for profit is cruel and dystopian. I already feel terribly for all the people I encounter who could be so much more focused on their own ambitions if they weren’t spending 4+ hours a day trapped in the infinite scroll of social media. I know how much of a setback that kind of addiction can be, because it used to be me.
  - okmokmz 8y ago
    >How do these researchers justify such a lack of empathy in their product? $$$$ and/or personality disorders I imagine
    - all2 8y ago
      Willful ignorance or cognitive dissonance may also explain some of this. See Nazi Germany: citizens knew something was going on, but they willed the whispering away.

quarkral 8y ago

I think recommender systems are the biggest culprit in this. Most recommender systems are probably trained with a simple objective of maximizing the amount of time the user spends browsing through the list of recommended items. The whole idea of continuously giving your users content so that they can passively scroll down and be entertained is just like putting users in a box where they can pull a lever to get food. When users are given all these options without having to think and to actively search for them, they just become vegetables.

metaos 8y ago

I read the title as "maps" not apps. I'll continue to wonder why I like maps so much...

piyh 8y ago

I found this youtube talk a while back. It's given by a consultant who's selling these skills and has slides titled "Use of coercive monitization". Some of the more disturbing parts are when he highlights forum posts about targeting whales and people who say things like "I have to do every challenge and every side quest and it takes away from my enjoyment of the game" and "I've restarted this game hundreds of times because my character isn't perfect". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zex3b2mDnUw&t=17m16s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zex3b2mDnUw&t=17m16s

Viki789 8y ago

Interesting article! Of course, scientists should work on the topic as the app developers want to attract as many users as possible. Everything is in our heads!

com2kid 8y ago

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.

bvxvbxbxb 8y ago

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...