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Subverted Design(joelcalifa.com)
over 5 years ago from Joel Califa, Senior Product Designer at GitHub
Joel Califa, over 5 years ago
Look, on the one hand you say that "if we build it they will come" doesn't necessarily work (and you're right), but on the other hand you're defending a sketchy tactic used by Airbnb, who already has what, a hundred million users and the accompanied momentum? Where does the optimization stop? When is enough enough?
To be clear, I don't think marketing and sales are evil. I agree that they are necessary to grow a business. I also agree with "everything in moderation." I don't actually think we're on different sides of this.
The article isn't about warring factions and I regret that it's being read that way. It's about a system in tech that consistently prioritizes money over user health. The first step is for us to break out of it—because I'm a Designer and I write what I know—the next is for the rest of the industry to break out of it. That can't happen overnight and honestly it's unlikely that it'll happen at all without a serious reckoning, but I have to try. The article is about being better, not about who's wrong and who's right.
Jimmy Hooker, over 5 years ago
I appreciate the intention, I just feel like it’s overly sensitive and ignores problems that are far worse.
The Airbnb thing to me is not sketchy, I’d like to understand you’re thinking on this more. I also think Facebook’s efforts to retain someone who is deactivating an account are pretty mild. They do far more shadey things with your data than they do with design based retention. Gamifying your attention with Skinner-box-like dopamine hits is far worse.
In general, in an article like this I’d really want to understand what we’re fighting against, and why it’s bad. Your article is too high level, and instead of exploring the business vs design perspectives, it mostly focuses on a “badness” that has pervaded the design sanctuary.
Rereading my responses, they’re definitely overly confrontational. However, I knew everyone in here would golf clap this and say “here here!”, and I feel like these ideas need to be challenged.
I respect you, a lot of your writing is very good. I just disagree with some of your points here, and I think that nuance and detailed examples are pretty important in an opinion piece like this, especially from someone with influence.
Samantha S, over 5 years ago Airbnb didn't start the whole 'x viewers looking at page' urgency pattern, it was in the hotel booking industry... so you can't really blame them for implementing this as they are competing with these travel booking sites.
For the record, I think it is a shady tactic cause the false sense of urgency really messes with people and their rational decision making process.
The problem with the way you frame this whole article is that it comes down to the silicon valley ideal of "If we build it, and it's good, they will come, and they will purchase". This is true for a lucky few, and only up to a point. You've clearly worked for some companies where you've been lucky enough for this to be true fairly often.
Too often in our industry, sales and marketing is looked at as some sort of manipulative evil. "If we have to sell it, then it must not be good, because the customer recognizes and purchases only greatness".
With any of these things, the dose is the poison. If you ratchet up 'growth hacking' to a crazy degree, you get LinkedIn style contact scraping, or Uber level competitiveness with its now obvious downsides. But plenty of people implement these tactics without going overboard, and without harming or offending their users. I love the one-click buy button on Amazon. Does this button make me more likely to purchase something I might've hemmed and hawed about? Of course! Is that bad? Occasionally maybe? But overall I certainly enjoy it.
Everything in moderation.
I agree that it's hard to put every thought into a scoped article, but I feel like there's too much of an 'us vs them' mentality here. Why is the little hint that this AirBnB is being looked at by multiple people not user friendly? What if they don't get it, then come back two days later and realize it's been booked? Is that a good result or a bad result for the user?
Every business is a balancing act between competing interests, constantly prioritizing. I don't think it's healthy to turn it into warring factions. I'd avoid it if I could. Just like we empathize with our users, we can empathize with the business side. Give them the benefit of the doubt.