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> The data/engineering/product loops at tech companies favor boosting short-term metrics I think this hits the nail on the head. Leadership is hard, and execut

> The data/engineering/product loops at tech companies favor boosting short-term metrics I think this hits the nail on the head. Leadership is hard, and executives can be many layers removed from the frontline. It seems that A/B tests and family have proven a really effective vehicle to communicate across leadership levels what has happened, why it happened, and the impact it had on the business. I'm definitely guilty as charged of having participated in this "pyramid scheme". Teams get a tool to structure work and determine success/fail. Managers get a tool to detail exact impact to leadership on how they're solving business problems. Executives get a tool showing how teams are being deployed on thoughtful projects with an iterative and rigorous scientific approach that helps increase confidence around deploying capital. The board gets some slides during the quarterly meeting and maybe might even see some charts showing growth and less cash burn. Eventually over longer periods like a year, executives will notice different trends than what the short-term numbers are showing and will have to make real hard decisions about how to steer the ship. It's a hell of a hamster wheel.

dr_dshiv 5y ago
How might a streaming service be designed to increase user happiness and wellbeing? From a positive design perspective, could certain streaming features give users a greater sense of purpose or goal accomplishment (e.g., mastering a genre) or help users meaningfully connect to others (e.g., seeing what friends have recommended lately)? While measuring the effects of a feature on wellbeing outcomes is substantially harder than measuring the effects of a feature on engagement (time spent), it is worth measuring/optimizing in the long run. The hypothesis is that capitalist enterprises that make their users feel happier and more fulfilled will, in the end, be more successful than enterprises that merely provide empty satisfaction. If not, the future could be very bleak.
- verve_rat 5y ago
  Maybe... make good shows?
  - dr_dshiv 5y ago
    Totally. But what's the metric for good? If it is the average time spent watching or most likely to be chosen out of a slate of options, then we get the current problem.
- tomnipotent 5y ago
  > designed to increase user happiness and wellbeing? I have complicated feelings about the roles of business in our lives. I'm not entirely certain that's a metric I'm concerned with them optimizing on, nor do I believe we can even remotely quantifiably capture it in any meaningful with with human-computer interactions.
  - dr_dshiv 5y ago
    Complicated feelings are warranted. But is it better for massive companies to ignore human wellbeing? We know that algorithmically optimized digital services can negatively effect wellbeing. We also know that management responds to metrics. I'm proposing that wellbeing metrics (namely, the self-reported effects of services on aspects of wellbeing) should be periodically gathered through surveys. Surely this takes effort, but if we only optimize what is easy to measure (time spent), this will continue to produce negative unintended consequences.
    - tomnipotent 5y ago
      How do we even begin to define wellbeing? How do you measure it, and do so at scale with statistical confidence? How do you finance it? How do you moderate and govern it? Who does it benefit besides the industries that spring up to support it? I don't think "wellbeing" is concrete enough an idea like business metrics to meaningful act upon in private organizations. Sort of a "road to hell paved in good intentions" concern.
      - dr_dshiv 5y ago
        Here's how the OECD does it at a country-level. A couple decades ago this probably seemed too hard. Then, it turns out it's not that hard to operationalize wellbeing and measure it at scale with statistical confidence. It isn't perfect — the science advances — and that's good. https://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/ https://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/ Companies already invest heavily in the assessment and optimization of employee wellbeing. This is a major industry in HR now, especially during covid. Is it really such a far stretch that a Facebook or Netflix should regularly gather metrics from a subset of customers to understand how their products affect user wellbeing?
- yakubin 5y ago
  > How might a streaming service be designed to increase user happiness and wellbeing? Yesterday I worked longer, because we had a critical bug at an unfortunate moment. At some point my brain stopped working and I couldn't make progress. So I stopped work for the day, solved some solitaire, mindlessly played some chess, and watched a couple episodes of anime on Netflix. After that my brain unblocked itself and the world stopped spinning around me. I wouldn't be able to read a book in this state, or anything requiring any thought or much energy[1]. Doing completely mindless things is sometimes beneficial for you. [1]: You might laugh, but you can absolutely play chess on autopilot without any thought and still win with people.
  - 542354234235 5y ago
    I don’t think anyone is saying that mindlessness should be banned or completely removed from a platform. But that it should not be pushed so heavily that it is edging out any kind of deeper engagement, or just non engagement. All these services are competing for human attention, which there is only a finite amount. I think it is pretty obvious that this has resulted in more mindlessness, where apps are trying to fill every sliver of open attention with the most easily digestible little piece of data (a 10 second meme, a couple of comments, a 30 sec friend snap). Combined with apps and services trying to take your attention from other things through strategic notifications, this is the opposite of long term wellbeing. Attention and focus for long periods of time is a skill. Delayed gratification is a skill. Both of those are needed for long term growth, developing other skills, and doing activities that are fulfilling but not immediately gratifying. Being surrounded by things that constantly and perniciously attempt to carve up your attention and provide instant gratification is detrimental to those skills.
- kqr 5y ago
  > How might a streaming service be designed to increase user happiness and wellbeing? The rational part of my brain would like - Suggestions for difficult content (this tends to be things you either love or hate, which is why Netflix does not suggest it, preferring safe bets); - Making it impossible to binge on one, or a small set, of things, instead forcing diversification; - Encourage spending short amounts of time -- e.g. by automatically breaking up movies into episodes, not autoplaying the next episode, disincentivising stupid cliffhangers, etc. I realise many of these things are actively user hostile and a service implementing them would be dumped in favour of the alternatives faster than they have time to rollback the commit. Including by myself, when I just want a low-effort way to pass the time with my wife until it's socially acceptable to go to bed. And that's sort of, I guess, the point. In order to increase user well being, a service like this probably has to encourage the user to spend less time with it. But that's not a business model that generates any money.
  - thomasahle 5y ago
    > I just want a low-effort way to pass the time with my wife until it's socially acceptable to go to bed. Is it really social pressure that prevents you from going to bed earlier?
  - 542354234235 5y ago
    I don’t think it has to be actively hostile. I think being almost neutral would go a long way. -No autoplay and bringing you back to the main menu at the end of content would give your brain a chance to actively decide if you want to continue or do something else. -No notifications or pushes to get you back on the service. So many services try very hard to take up space in your mind while you aren’t using them, in order to get you back on the platform. -Suggestions allow for diversification as well as deeper understanding. This might be suggesting documentaries related to fictional subjects you are watching, critically acclaimed content in your preferred genres, or expert analysis and contextualization of content that allows for better understanding of cinematography or cultural influences on a piece of media. -Low effort and binge content is shuffled out of immediate sight and flashy attention grabbing ways of displaying content in general is stopped. Now you are more of a passive participant, where you keep getting notifications until you open the app, then are bombarded with easily digestible, low effort content that actively plays itself, and discourages anything that requires delayed gratification or long term focus. These things would shift the way you interact to an active participant, where you decide to engage the app without prompt, and look for something you want to engage with, or don’t and easily leave to do something else. This really only works if every other app and service isn’t constantly battling to fill every sliver of open attention with the most easily digestible little piece of data (a 10 second meme, a couple of comments, a 30 sec friend snap) and to drag your attention back from other things through strategic notifications, gamification, and feelings of social obligation (did you wish kqr happy birthday? click here to write on his wall). Attention and focus for long periods of time is a skill. Delayed gratification is a skill. Both of those are needed for long term growth, developing new skills, maintaining other skills, and doing activities that are fulfilling but not immediately gratifying. Being surrounded by things that constantly and perniciously attempt to carve up your attention and provide instant gratification is detrimental to those skills. I want my digital environment to help improve those skills, or at least not be actively harmful to them. In the same way we have spent the last 15 years and petabytes of data, optimizing algorithms to increase engagement by any means, we could use that data and AI to start optimizing for sleep quality, mental health, goal attainment, financial stability, physical health, minimization of insecurity, etc. If Amazon can predict when women are pregnant before they know, I’m sure we could optimize for these. > In order to increase user well being, a service like this probably has to encourage the user to spend less time with it. But that's not a business model that generates any money. That is really the fatal crux of a digital environment funded largely through ads. The user will always be the product and will be manipulated to benefit the customer, regardless of the effect on the user.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- colechristensen 5y ago
  Quality often escapes measurement. The naive overreliance on finding a number to optimize is an enemy of quality, and is all over the place, and can be boiled down to people being driven by somebody’s need to make a nice powerpoint slide.
  - ansgri 5y ago
    Misread ‘overreliance’ as ‘orwelliance’, what a suitable neologism for such topics!
  - dr_dshiv 5y ago
    I generally agree. Finding numbers to measure quality almost never helps composers or cooks, but it almost always helps organizations. Why? Quality oddly lends itself to quantification. Rotten Tomatoes and Amazon stars don't always work, but i find they work shockingly well. I'm not going to naively defend the benefits of quality measurement, but i do advocate for the importance of continuously improving quality measurement systems. And key to this, imo, is making sure we take the effort to measure the values we actually want to enhance.
- nonameiguess 5y ago
  The answer is at the very bottom of the article and maybe Netflix is already doing it. It mentioned a producer was told his show was renewed not based on the "how many people viewed for at least two minutes" metric that gets reported to ratings publishers, but based on how many people actually watched the entire season. It isn't this trivial for all media, but I think "watched the entire thing" is a very obvious metric to optimize for when recommending and promoting films and series.
- Noos 5y ago
  The only thing worse than engineers trying to use algorithims to make us eat junk food is them using them to try and make us healthy. This is because at least the junk food part no one will be able to seriously defend is morally right. The best way to tyranize others is to claim to be working for their own good. Netflix is fine.
JohnWhigham 5y ago
Early in his term, Trump flirted with the idea of changing quarterly earnings reports to be biannual. I wonder how much that would have shook up corporate culture.
- kbelder 5y ago
  Kind of a pity his term went in such... surreal directions, because I think he probably could have had some interesting ideas in areas like corporate governance. He had a mix of insider experience and a populist platform.

dr_dshiv 5y ago

How might a streaming service be designed to increase user happiness and wellbeing? From a positive design perspective, could certain streaming features give users a greater sense of purpose or goal accomplishment (e.g., mastering a genre) or help users meaningfully connect to others (e.g., seeing what friends have recommended lately)? While measuring the effects of a feature on wellbeing outcomes is substantially harder than measuring the effects of a feature on engagement (time spent), it is worth measuring/optimizing in the long run. The hypothesis is that capitalist enterprises that make their users feel happier and more fulfilled will, in the end, be more successful than enterprises that merely provide empty satisfaction. If not, the future could be very bleak.

verve_rat 5y ago
Maybe... make good shows?
- dr_dshiv 5y ago
  Totally. But what's the metric for good? If it is the average time spent watching or most likely to be chosen out of a slate of options, then we get the current problem.
tomnipotent 5y ago
> designed to increase user happiness and wellbeing? I have complicated feelings about the roles of business in our lives. I'm not entirely certain that's a metric I'm concerned with them optimizing on, nor do I believe we can even remotely quantifiably capture it in any meaningful with with human-computer interactions.
- dr_dshiv 5y ago
  Complicated feelings are warranted. But is it better for massive companies to ignore human wellbeing? We know that algorithmically optimized digital services can negatively effect wellbeing. We also know that management responds to metrics. I'm proposing that wellbeing metrics (namely, the self-reported effects of services on aspects of wellbeing) should be periodically gathered through surveys. Surely this takes effort, but if we only optimize what is easy to measure (time spent), this will continue to produce negative unintended consequences.
  - tomnipotent 5y ago
    How do we even begin to define wellbeing? How do you measure it, and do so at scale with statistical confidence? How do you finance it? How do you moderate and govern it? Who does it benefit besides the industries that spring up to support it? I don't think "wellbeing" is concrete enough an idea like business metrics to meaningful act upon in private organizations. Sort of a "road to hell paved in good intentions" concern.
    - dr_dshiv 5y ago
      Here's how the OECD does it at a country-level. A couple decades ago this probably seemed too hard. Then, it turns out it's not that hard to operationalize wellbeing and measure it at scale with statistical confidence. It isn't perfect — the science advances — and that's good. https://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/ https://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/ Companies already invest heavily in the assessment and optimization of employee wellbeing. This is a major industry in HR now, especially during covid. Is it really such a far stretch that a Facebook or Netflix should regularly gather metrics from a subset of customers to understand how their products affect user wellbeing?
yakubin 5y ago
> How might a streaming service be designed to increase user happiness and wellbeing? Yesterday I worked longer, because we had a critical bug at an unfortunate moment. At some point my brain stopped working and I couldn't make progress. So I stopped work for the day, solved some solitaire, mindlessly played some chess, and watched a couple episodes of anime on Netflix. After that my brain unblocked itself and the world stopped spinning around me. I wouldn't be able to read a book in this state, or anything requiring any thought or much energy[1]. Doing completely mindless things is sometimes beneficial for you. [1]: You might laugh, but you can absolutely play chess on autopilot without any thought and still win with people.
- 542354234235 5y ago
  I don’t think anyone is saying that mindlessness should be banned or completely removed from a platform. But that it should not be pushed so heavily that it is edging out any kind of deeper engagement, or just non engagement. All these services are competing for human attention, which there is only a finite amount. I think it is pretty obvious that this has resulted in more mindlessness, where apps are trying to fill every sliver of open attention with the most easily digestible little piece of data (a 10 second meme, a couple of comments, a 30 sec friend snap). Combined with apps and services trying to take your attention from other things through strategic notifications, this is the opposite of long term wellbeing. Attention and focus for long periods of time is a skill. Delayed gratification is a skill. Both of those are needed for long term growth, developing other skills, and doing activities that are fulfilling but not immediately gratifying. Being surrounded by things that constantly and perniciously attempt to carve up your attention and provide instant gratification is detrimental to those skills.
kqr 5y ago
> How might a streaming service be designed to increase user happiness and wellbeing? The rational part of my brain would like - Suggestions for difficult content (this tends to be things you either love or hate, which is why Netflix does not suggest it, preferring safe bets); - Making it impossible to binge on one, or a small set, of things, instead forcing diversification; - Encourage spending short amounts of time -- e.g. by automatically breaking up movies into episodes, not autoplaying the next episode, disincentivising stupid cliffhangers, etc. I realise many of these things are actively user hostile and a service implementing them would be dumped in favour of the alternatives faster than they have time to rollback the commit. Including by myself, when I just want a low-effort way to pass the time with my wife until it's socially acceptable to go to bed. And that's sort of, I guess, the point. In order to increase user well being, a service like this probably has to encourage the user to spend less time with it. But that's not a business model that generates any money.
- thomasahle 5y ago
  > I just want a low-effort way to pass the time with my wife until it's socially acceptable to go to bed. Is it really social pressure that prevents you from going to bed earlier?
- 542354234235 5y ago
  I don’t think it has to be actively hostile. I think being almost neutral would go a long way. -No autoplay and bringing you back to the main menu at the end of content would give your brain a chance to actively decide if you want to continue or do something else. -No notifications or pushes to get you back on the service. So many services try very hard to take up space in your mind while you aren’t using them, in order to get you back on the platform. -Suggestions allow for diversification as well as deeper understanding. This might be suggesting documentaries related to fictional subjects you are watching, critically acclaimed content in your preferred genres, or expert analysis and contextualization of content that allows for better understanding of cinematography or cultural influences on a piece of media. -Low effort and binge content is shuffled out of immediate sight and flashy attention grabbing ways of displaying content in general is stopped. Now you are more of a passive participant, where you keep getting notifications until you open the app, then are bombarded with easily digestible, low effort content that actively plays itself, and discourages anything that requires delayed gratification or long term focus. These things would shift the way you interact to an active participant, where you decide to engage the app without prompt, and look for something you want to engage with, or don’t and easily leave to do something else. This really only works if every other app and service isn’t constantly battling to fill every sliver of open attention with the most easily digestible little piece of data (a 10 second meme, a couple of comments, a 30 sec friend snap) and to drag your attention back from other things through strategic notifications, gamification, and feelings of social obligation (did you wish kqr happy birthday? click here to write on his wall). Attention and focus for long periods of time is a skill. Delayed gratification is a skill. Both of those are needed for long term growth, developing new skills, maintaining other skills, and doing activities that are fulfilling but not immediately gratifying. Being surrounded by things that constantly and perniciously attempt to carve up your attention and provide instant gratification is detrimental to those skills. I want my digital environment to help improve those skills, or at least not be actively harmful to them. In the same way we have spent the last 15 years and petabytes of data, optimizing algorithms to increase engagement by any means, we could use that data and AI to start optimizing for sleep quality, mental health, goal attainment, financial stability, physical health, minimization of insecurity, etc. If Amazon can predict when women are pregnant before they know, I’m sure we could optimize for these. > In order to increase user well being, a service like this probably has to encourage the user to spend less time with it. But that's not a business model that generates any money. That is really the fatal crux of a digital environment funded largely through ads. The user will always be the product and will be manipulated to benefit the customer, regardless of the effect on the user.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
colechristensen 5y ago
Quality often escapes measurement. The naive overreliance on finding a number to optimize is an enemy of quality, and is all over the place, and can be boiled down to people being driven by somebody’s need to make a nice powerpoint slide.
- ansgri 5y ago
  Misread ‘overreliance’ as ‘orwelliance’, what a suitable neologism for such topics!
- dr_dshiv 5y ago
  I generally agree. Finding numbers to measure quality almost never helps composers or cooks, but it almost always helps organizations. Why? Quality oddly lends itself to quantification. Rotten Tomatoes and Amazon stars don't always work, but i find they work shockingly well. I'm not going to naively defend the benefits of quality measurement, but i do advocate for the importance of continuously improving quality measurement systems. And key to this, imo, is making sure we take the effort to measure the values we actually want to enhance.
nonameiguess 5y ago
The answer is at the very bottom of the article and maybe Netflix is already doing it. It mentioned a producer was told his show was renewed not based on the "how many people viewed for at least two minutes" metric that gets reported to ratings publishers, but based on how many people actually watched the entire season. It isn't this trivial for all media, but I think "watched the entire thing" is a very obvious metric to optimize for when recommending and promoting films and series.
Noos 5y ago
The only thing worse than engineers trying to use algorithims to make us eat junk food is them using them to try and make us healthy. This is because at least the junk food part no one will be able to seriously defend is morally right. The best way to tyranize others is to claim to be working for their own good. Netflix is fine.

JohnWhigham 5y ago

Early in his term, Trump flirted with the idea of changing quarterly earnings reports to be biannual. I wonder how much that would have shook up corporate culture.

kbelder 5y ago
Kind of a pity his term went in such... surreal directions, because I think he probably could have had some interesting ideas in areas like corporate governance. He had a mix of insider experience and a populist platform.