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I am surprised that Amazon had the gall to call this project "Iliad". I am even more surprised that anyone could consider a design decision anything else than i

by VSerge 5y ago

I am surprised that Amazon had the gall to call this project "Iliad". I am even more surprised that anyone could consider a design decision anything else than intentional. Dark patterns are by definition intentional. Is this a question that courts or legislators are struggling with? Surely this is beyond any reasonable doubt.

xg15 5y ago
You can easily statistics-wash your reasoning into something that seems at first glance beneficial. If I remember Pinterest's blog post about their nag-screen correctly, the argument would go something like this: - We continuously improve the UX of our services using an empirical, data-driven approach. - One of the KPIs we optimize for is retention of Prime customers. - Our A/B tests showed that the changes introduced by Iliad significantly improved the retention rate. - Therefore we decided to roll-out the changes globally, so our whole userbase can benefit from the improvements. It's still intentionally introducing a dark pattern, but you don't have to use any ugly words anymore when taking about it...
- hetspookjee 5y ago
  Ah yes with enough gymnastics one could end up in a paperclip maximiser situation.
  - xg15 5y ago
    A paperclip maximizer would at least have a supportable goal. I don't think that's the case here. A lot of the rethoric around "data-driven UX" just pretends that the company's goals are always perfectly aligned with the customers' - when of course in reality, they are often completely at odds. This makes it easy to talk about "improvements" and "optimisations" and make it seem like those changes would be in the interest of the users - when in reality, the changes are primarily improvements for the company. E.g. "retention" is really a poor proxy for user satisfaction. Yes, a user can stay because they like the service. They can also stay because they haven't yet found what they were looking for, because they don't know how to unsubscribe or because they are addicted. Retention doesn't care. However, what retention is a very good indicator of is how well a user can be monetized. I think, the fact that after so many years, retention is still one of the primary KPIs shows pretty well how serious the talk about "user satisfaction" really is.
  - hinkley 5y ago
    Someone, an author I think, but I can't recall who, asserted that all dystopian stories are built on taking a simple rule and just following it to its horrible conclusion. The simpler the rule the more corner cases it ignores, and those 'corners' are real human beings. Nothing is more dystopian fodder than reducing a decision to pure numbers, and ignoring your instincts and feelings and looking at the numbers instead is literally built into Amazon's mantra. The only surprise is how long they've managed to maintain an illusion of being benign.
tgv 5y ago
> I am surprised that Amazon had the gall to call this project "Iliad". Because it sends the customer on a trip that takes forever because of luring sirens, amongst other traps?
- brimble 5y ago
  Rather, it's a 10-year-long war.
deanCommie 5y ago
Internal project code names are sometimes sarcastic, and are never meant for public consumption. It's obviously embarrassing the way it's presented, but it's not like someone was sitting around twirling their mustache plotting something evil. Here's a more charitable interpretation to consider: "We have worked hard to make Prime a good deal for customers. But we also know that a lot of customers don't know about the benefits. They just know that if they sign up for Prime they can get free shipping. So they do so and then they cancel. Are we sure that customers know about all the benefits that they get from Prime before they cancel? Maybe if they did, they would not be so hasty. Do they know about Music and Photos and Video? Maybe if they did, they'd keep it around. Let's show them the options during the cancellation flow to make sure they REALLY know what they're giving up. And let's flip around the yes/no buttons to make sure they actually read it - similar to what security confirmation messages do when you're about to do something irreversible."

by VSerge 5y ago

xg15 5y ago

You can easily statistics-wash your reasoning into something that seems at first glance beneficial. If I remember Pinterest's blog post about their nag-screen correctly, the argument would go something like this: - We continuously improve the UX of our services using an empirical, data-driven approach. - One of the KPIs we optimize for is retention of Prime customers. - Our A/B tests showed that the changes introduced by Iliad significantly improved the retention rate. - Therefore we decided to roll-out the changes globally, so our whole userbase can benefit from the improvements. It's still intentionally introducing a dark pattern, but you don't have to use any ugly words anymore when taking about it...

hetspookjee 5y ago
Ah yes with enough gymnastics one could end up in a paperclip maximiser situation.
- xg15 5y ago
  A paperclip maximizer would at least have a supportable goal. I don't think that's the case here. A lot of the rethoric around "data-driven UX" just pretends that the company's goals are always perfectly aligned with the customers' - when of course in reality, they are often completely at odds. This makes it easy to talk about "improvements" and "optimisations" and make it seem like those changes would be in the interest of the users - when in reality, the changes are primarily improvements for the company. E.g. "retention" is really a poor proxy for user satisfaction. Yes, a user can stay because they like the service. They can also stay because they haven't yet found what they were looking for, because they don't know how to unsubscribe or because they are addicted. Retention doesn't care. However, what retention is a very good indicator of is how well a user can be monetized. I think, the fact that after so many years, retention is still one of the primary KPIs shows pretty well how serious the talk about "user satisfaction" really is.
- hinkley 5y ago
  Someone, an author I think, but I can't recall who, asserted that all dystopian stories are built on taking a simple rule and just following it to its horrible conclusion. The simpler the rule the more corner cases it ignores, and those 'corners' are real human beings. Nothing is more dystopian fodder than reducing a decision to pure numbers, and ignoring your instincts and feelings and looking at the numbers instead is literally built into Amazon's mantra. The only surprise is how long they've managed to maintain an illusion of being benign.

tgv 5y ago

> I am surprised that Amazon had the gall to call this project "Iliad". Because it sends the customer on a trip that takes forever because of luring sirens, amongst other traps?

brimble 5y ago
Rather, it's a 10-year-long war.

deanCommie 5y ago

Internal project code names are sometimes sarcastic, and are never meant for public consumption. It's obviously embarrassing the way it's presented, but it's not like someone was sitting around twirling their mustache plotting something evil. Here's a more charitable interpretation to consider: "We have worked hard to make Prime a good deal for customers. But we also know that a lot of customers don't know about the benefits. They just know that if they sign up for Prime they can get free shipping. So they do so and then they cancel. Are we sure that customers know about all the benefits that they get from Prime before they cancel? Maybe if they did, they would not be so hasty. Do they know about Music and Photos and Video? Maybe if they did, they'd keep it around. Let's show them the options during the cancellation flow to make sure they REALLY know what they're giving up. And let's flip around the yes/no buttons to make sure they actually read it - similar to what security confirmation messages do when you're about to do something irreversible."