<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>annadane</author><text>I mean one way to do it properly is to actually listen to your users. So many corporations claim to have that as a priority and when you look at real, actual feedback, they really don&amp;#x27;t. How hard is it to look at the masses of complaints about autoplay or notification spam or... any numbers of dark patterns you could name and decide that you shouldn&amp;#x27;t do that?</text></comment>