4 ms·

On the flip side my government insists on giving me a choice of schools for my child. I don't really want choice, I want the local school to be good and for my

On the flip side my government insists on giving me a choice of schools for my child. I don't really want choice, I want the local school to be good and for my children to go there. In this view, users still don't want control, its just a symptom of the failure to provide what users do actually want. The truth is probably between these 2 outlooks

rubber_duck 8y ago
> I want the local school to be good and for my children to go there That's assuming there's a universal "good" - even if a school meets some general standards one school can have a better arts program, the other might be more biased towards sports, etc. I don't see anything wrong with having choice - having a good baseline everywhere is a separate issue.
- benj111 8y ago
  Well lets go out on a limb and say all schools are good, and specialise in one subject. Which should I send my 5 or 11 year old to? I mean they like football, but they also like drawing, but then neither of those are well known for paying the bills. So I still circle back making sure they get a balanced education. The problem though is that choice is the supposed solution to not having good schools. That may be UK specific though.
  - tomatocracy 8y ago
    The idea (although rather poorly implemented in the UK state system) is that choice leads to competition, and competition leads to improvement even of those at the bottom (and even for those who don’t really pay attention to the choice/don’t care). It’s a market philosophy of sorts.
    - benj111 8y ago
      I know that's the idea. The result is schools spending a non trivial amount of time jumping through hoops for the benefit of people who are ill equipped to evaluate those schools. On top of that the number of places are fairly static year to year so all schools end up getting filled anyway, but the 'better' schools are filled with the students that arguably least need the benefits, whereas the worst schools are filled with the children of the least able.
      - tomatocracy 8y ago
        Yes. The 'market' mechanism for popular schools to find money and permission to expand while less popular ones are closed or taken over is missing and subject to too much political interference. So it arguably ends up as the worst of both worlds.
Angostura 8y ago
Ah, exactly the issue that sprung to my mind too. The tyranny of "choice" as introduced into various UK governmental systems is so bloody annoying. Great, I can "choose" my kids school, armed with a spreadsheet and looking at various progress, attainment and wellbeing metrics, that never actually seem to capture how happy and fullfilled the kids are at school. I can "choose" my hopsital consultant using the choose-and-book system. No. I want to send my kid to the local school that will be good and I want to go to the local hospital where I will be treated by a well qualified caring medical professional. I don't want to have to create pivot tables.
- benj111 8y ago
  I'm British too, is this a British thing? Schools, not pivot tables.
  - Angostura 8y ago
    Knock yourself out https://www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk https://www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk
- xorcist 8y ago
  It also provides the strange incentive to optimize for glossy powerpoint presentation that communicates our core values to parents. Organizations which never had to have a marketing department finds themselves struggling without one.
naravara 8y ago
>On the flip side my government insists on giving me a choice of schools for my child. I don't really want choice, I want the local school to be good and for my children to go there. Yeah, people mostly start asking for control when you make the default experience shitty. They want control to escape the hell they've been put in, but they have to pay a price for it either in money or time. So functionally, "give users more control" is really saying "make the user pay more to use my product." In an ideal world everything would be bespoke and custom tailored for me, but the idea there is that the tailor knows how to create what I want. Not that I have to go tailoring all my own stuff. I'm not competent enough to do that unless it's my hobby.
- webmaven 8y ago
  > They want control to escape the hell they've been put in OTOH, if "user control" is seen as table stakes or baseline, it can limit the shittiness level that users will tolerate by lowering switching costs.

rubber_duck 8y ago

> I want the local school to be good and for my children to go there That's assuming there's a universal "good" - even if a school meets some general standards one school can have a better arts program, the other might be more biased towards sports, etc. I don't see anything wrong with having choice - having a good baseline everywhere is a separate issue.

benj111 8y ago
Well lets go out on a limb and say all schools are good, and specialise in one subject. Which should I send my 5 or 11 year old to? I mean they like football, but they also like drawing, but then neither of those are well known for paying the bills. So I still circle back making sure they get a balanced education. The problem though is that choice is the supposed solution to not having good schools. That may be UK specific though.
- tomatocracy 8y ago
  The idea (although rather poorly implemented in the UK state system) is that choice leads to competition, and competition leads to improvement even of those at the bottom (and even for those who don’t really pay attention to the choice/don’t care). It’s a market philosophy of sorts.
  - benj111 8y ago
    I know that's the idea. The result is schools spending a non trivial amount of time jumping through hoops for the benefit of people who are ill equipped to evaluate those schools. On top of that the number of places are fairly static year to year so all schools end up getting filled anyway, but the 'better' schools are filled with the students that arguably least need the benefits, whereas the worst schools are filled with the children of the least able.
    - tomatocracy 8y ago
      Yes. The 'market' mechanism for popular schools to find money and permission to expand while less popular ones are closed or taken over is missing and subject to too much political interference. So it arguably ends up as the worst of both worlds.

Angostura 8y ago

Ah, exactly the issue that sprung to my mind too. The tyranny of "choice" as introduced into various UK governmental systems is so bloody annoying. Great, I can "choose" my kids school, armed with a spreadsheet and looking at various progress, attainment and wellbeing metrics, that never actually seem to capture how happy and fullfilled the kids are at school. I can "choose" my hopsital consultant using the choose-and-book system. No. I want to send my kid to the local school that will be good and I want to go to the local hospital where I will be treated by a well qualified caring medical professional. I don't want to have to create pivot tables.

benj111 8y ago
I'm British too, is this a British thing? Schools, not pivot tables.
- Angostura 8y ago
  Knock yourself out https://www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk https://www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk
xorcist 8y ago
It also provides the strange incentive to optimize for glossy powerpoint presentation that communicates our core values to parents. Organizations which never had to have a marketing department finds themselves struggling without one.

naravara 8y ago

>On the flip side my government insists on giving me a choice of schools for my child. I don't really want choice, I want the local school to be good and for my children to go there. Yeah, people mostly start asking for control when you make the default experience shitty. They want control to escape the hell they've been put in, but they have to pay a price for it either in money or time. So functionally, "give users more control" is really saying "make the user pay more to use my product." In an ideal world everything would be bespoke and custom tailored for me, but the idea there is that the tailor knows how to create what I want. Not that I have to go tailoring all my own stuff. I'm not competent enough to do that unless it's my hobby.

webmaven 8y ago
> They want control to escape the hell they've been put in OTOH, if "user control" is seen as table stakes or baseline, it can limit the shittiness level that users will tolerate by lowering switching costs.