Thursday, July 25, 2019

Our product is a slot machine that plays you. (Ramsey Brown)

Oh dear! That’s not good.

And just in case you think you may have misheard that, I’ll have you know that Mr. Brown is the CEO of the aptly – and rather bluntly – named Dopamine Labs. Yup, this outfit aims to “hack user engagement and retention using models from neuroscience,” “change … human behavior with unprecedented ease,” and “rewire user behavior and drive your KPIs.” Charming.

Of course, there’s all sorts of palaver about using it only for good … But it does sound, though, like their honesty may have provided us with something of an honest-to-goodness smoking gun when it comes to the motivation behind tech addiction.

I mean, we’re all familiar with the classic quote, “If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product.” Now, that's not exactly something that can be traced back to Jack Dorsey or Mark Zuckerberg, right?

But here, we have a quote that we can trace directly back to a VC-funded Silicon Valley outfit. They’re certainly no Facebook or Twitter or Snapchat ... at least, at this point.

What is he actually talking about? Why, intermittent reward, of course. What’s that? Well, it’s a psychological principle that dates all the way back to B.F. Skinner. It basically states that if you never get a reward, you’ll give up; if you always get the same reward, you’ll eventually get bored; but if you get a reward seemingly randomly, you’ll get hooked. It’s the idea behind slot machines … and email, and Facebook, and all sorts of social media and tech in general.

The dopamine connection? It’s the neurotransmitter that drives all this. Though many people mistakenly identify dopamine with pleasure, it actually drives seeking behavior. 

And this basic human chemical – one that we are largely unaware of, have no control over, but that drives large parts of our behavior – has been hacked by Silicon Valley to make rich people richer, with no real thought to any of the consequences or ethics involved. Charming indeed.


This is either B.F. Skinner or some kind of space alien

Tuesday, July 23, 2019

Just because it isn’t done doesn’t mean it can’t be done. Just because it can be done doesn’t mean it should be done. (Barry Glasford)

I was listening to something on NPR today about the new version of The Lion King, which just came out. In case you’re not au courant with all things Disney, the new one is all CGI, with absolutely no animation, unlike the first one. One of the panelists hated the new version, and used almost this same quote to justify his stance. Even though I haven’t seen either version, he made some excellent points, and I heartily agreed with him. 

Personally, I’m familiar with the quote from my own field, but I can definitely see where it could apply almost anywhere. In fact, a quick Google search led me to links related to the Bible, feminism, travel, self-help, and – OMG! – Disney’s new Lion King.

Interestingly, though, most of those results focused on the first part of the saying. Now, to me, there’s no real insight in that. That’s basically a, “Well, duh, so what?” 

The real wisdom is in the second part. In other words, this is really a matter of balance. So, in addition to being innovative and creative and ground-breaking and all, we also have to be aware of the possibility of conflicting goals (and unintended consequences as well).

I think that’s especially important in the field of UX. So, while designers, developers, and marketeers may have fallen in love with some new “kewl” way of doing things, the team really does need to ask itself whether that’s genuinely helpful, or right for this audience, or for this context – or whether it simply gets in the way (or is even impossible to understand or use). Otherwise, all you’re really doing is showing off.

A perfect example of this just happened recently at work - one of my designers came up with a scrolling marquee. Now, in our field, brokerage, this does make some sense. You’re probably familiar with old ticker-tape-style marquees outside and inside actual brokerage offices. So, this is really just putting something like that online. And there is at least one competitor who does that as well.

At the same time, though, there are also some good arguments against it – it’s distracting, there are accessibility issues, it can remind users of those cheesy marquees on amateur sites that date back to the 90’s …

Well, I wasn’t able to convince anyone to ditch it. But it did prompt this post. And we’ll definitely see who comes out on top after a little usability testing.