<story><title>Netflix Pulls the Plug on Feature Designed to Get Kids Addicted to Netflix</title><url>https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/03/netflix-patch-testing-kids-binge-watching</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>parhamn</author><text>Lots of folks&amp;#x2F;companies are going to lose long-term as a result of bad A&amp;#x2F;B testing driven decision making. I suspect the decline of the Facebook feed might be attributed to this as well (maybe even the recent polls of Trump&amp;#x27;s twitter practices[1]). Generally these sorts of things don&amp;#x27;t really consider long term fatigue and other important factors, and take short term micro-benchmark wins as success. On the flip side, some attribute not A&amp;#x2F;B testing to the failure of the SnapChat redesign[2].&lt;p&gt;Is there anyway to do this properly? I can imagine the problem will get worse and worse as we reduce human evaluation of A&amp;#x2F;B test results and automatically make real-time decisions through software and ML.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&amp;#x2F;poll-shows-trump-appears-to-be-losing-somewhat-supporters-with-antics-2018-12&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&amp;#x2F;poll-shows-trump-appears-to-...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.engadget.com&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;snap-evan-spiegel-app-redesign-rushed&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.engadget.com&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;snap-evan-spiegel-app-re...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>apatters</author><text>Any metric or KPI is going to get gamed in harmful ways if it&amp;#x27;s prioritized too highly. So the answer is to use A&amp;#x2F;B testing to make sure you&amp;#x27;re not regressing on the goals of a design change, and judiciously, to validate whether your change is moving things in the right direction.&lt;p&gt;But beyond that you have to do the hard slog of mastering the discipline of UX, real, human-centric design, and accept that not everything important is measurable.&lt;p&gt;We have plenty of examples of how doing real UX instead of playing a numbers game can differentiate your business, Apple has applied this philosophy consistently over many years.&lt;p&gt;The root of the problem is a &amp;quot;fuck you, market share at all costs&amp;quot; culture that has come to permeate Silicon Valley. And you can argue (somewhat cynically) that this philosophy makes sense in a blue ocean where you have no competition and just need to gobble up people and turn them into cash before someone else does. But I think going forward this mentality may actually become a liability as more humane alternatives to heavily despised products emerge. Many of the current crop of giants seem to have forgotten that a company&amp;#x27;s most valuable asset is always its brand.</text></comment>
<story><title>Netflix Pulls the Plug on Feature Designed to Get Kids Addicted to Netflix</title><url>https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/03/netflix-patch-testing-kids-binge-watching</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>parhamn</author><text>Lots of folks&amp;#x2F;companies are going to lose long-term as a result of bad A&amp;#x2F;B testing driven decision making. I suspect the decline of the Facebook feed might be attributed to this as well (maybe even the recent polls of Trump&amp;#x27;s twitter practices[1]). Generally these sorts of things don&amp;#x27;t really consider long term fatigue and other important factors, and take short term micro-benchmark wins as success. On the flip side, some attribute not A&amp;#x2F;B testing to the failure of the SnapChat redesign[2].&lt;p&gt;Is there anyway to do this properly? I can imagine the problem will get worse and worse as we reduce human evaluation of A&amp;#x2F;B test results and automatically make real-time decisions through software and ML.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&amp;#x2F;poll-shows-trump-appears-to-be-losing-somewhat-supporters-with-antics-2018-12&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&amp;#x2F;poll-shows-trump-appears-to-...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.engadget.com&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;snap-evan-spiegel-app-redesign-rushed&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.engadget.com&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;snap-evan-spiegel-app-re...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>johnday</author><text>&amp;gt; Is there anyway to do this properly?&lt;p&gt;The way to do it properly is to hire experienced, competent UX designers and human computer interaction specialists, who understand the problem space and how to keep people engaged without addictive malpractice &amp;#x2F; dark patterns. Metrics are useful but they are what they claim to be - measurements - and nothing more.&lt;p&gt;You wouldn&amp;#x27;t choose which house to buy based on how large it was measured to be, but you &lt;i&gt;would&lt;/i&gt; expect a surveyor to make those measurements.&lt;p&gt;Speaking as a web and video game designer, I can&amp;#x27;t wait until I can hire someone to think about these things for me.</text></comment>