Backseat Software
28 points by chai
28 points by chai
An incredibly thoughtful and well-written essay. It resonated with me from top to bottom.
This is a useful way to think about software. Most users don’t want “software.” They want the outcome: write the document, edit the photo, pay the invoice, file the taxes, ship the code, communicate with the team
Perhaps this is a manifestation of an ethos version of Conway's Law: software used to be invisible in order to do a thing, but Silicon Valley self-importance led to software wanting to be the thing itself.
I once had the pleasure of walking on the streets of SF in between conference talks to get some coffee listening to new acquaintances talk about their work. One was bragging how they got promoted to lead a new team because, among other things, the engagement numbers from their previous project broke company records. The secret was making an "mandatory consumer on-boarding experience". Also changing buttons to a brighter shade of red, since analytics showed %15 increase in clickability. They shared many such "hacks". I probably earn a small fraction of what they do, but I recoiled in disgust reflecting on that experience.
This is only possible as the users and developers are otherized from each other. (Find me better ways to put it.)
It's all well and good in free and open-source software, or at least where the developers themselves use the software, make decisions about development matters and feel as one with the userbase: there's a sense of unity and empathy. However, with this othering, the users eventually get reduced to mere abstractions and metrics, leading upto being experimented upon like this.
Tagore put it this way while talking about nationalism and colonization, but it should in general be applicable to this situation, pray be later than sooner:
But we, who are governed, are not a mere abstraction. We, on our side, are individuals with living sensibilities. What comes to us in the shape of a mere bloodless policy may pierce into the very core of our life, may threaten the whole future of our people with a perpetual helplessness of emasculation, and yet may never touch the chord of humanity on the other side, or touch it in the most inadequately feeble manner. Such wholesale and universal acts of fearful responsibility man can never perform, with such a degree of systematic unawareness, where he is an individual human being. These only become possible where the man is represented by an octopus of abstractions, sending out its wriggling arms in all directions of space, and fixing its innumerable suckers even into the far-away future. In this reign of the nation, the governed are pursued by suspicions; and these are the suspicions of a tremendous mass of organized brain and muscle. Punishments are meted out, leaving a trail of miseries across a large bleeding tract of the human heart; but these punishments are dealt by a mere abstract force, in which a whole population of a distant country has lost its human personality.
Giving in to the conveniences afforded by modern software and not taking software freedom seriously shall cost us dearly. This is about the distribution of power; needing us to be careful about complicity and complacency.
This is only possible as the users and developers are otherized from each other
I'd agree if we're talking just about bad UX, but that's not really what this is about. It's more about putting the needs of the company over the needs of the user.
It's all well and good in free and open-source software, or at least where the developers themselves use the software, make decisions about development matters and feel as one with the userbase: there's a sense of unity and empathy. However, with this othering, the users eventually get reduced to mere abstractions and metrics, leading upto being experimented upon like this.
Even without "othering", where there's developers dogfooding the software, this happens. For example, I've heard it said that everyone working at Apple hates Siri, even if they all use iOS themselves as well. It's all the business pressure of marketing and "growth hacking", pleasing the shareholders etc. edit: Perhaps more succinctly, it happens when the developers are either not in charge of the product, and perhaps also when they are in charge, but not using the product.
As the article puts it:
Over time, this can change the role of a product team where judgment slowly gives way to iteration, and taste gives way to performance. The product still evolves, but it does so without a clear sense of direction…only a sense of momentum.
So the values and ideals get slowly eroded by money and power. In this way, the stream of reason is lost, with instincts taking its place. The mirage of endless growth, the slavery to avarice..
Or, as Tagore put it in that same essay:
When this organization of politics and commerce, whose other name is the Nation, becomes all powerful at the cost of the harmony of the higher social life, then it is an evil day for humanity. When a father becomes a gambler and his obligations to his family take the secondary place in his mind, then he is no longer a man, but an automaton led by the power of greed. Then he can do things which, in his normal state of mind, he would be ashamed to do. It is the same thing with society. When it allows itself to be turned into a perfect organization of power, then there are few crimes which it is unable to perpetrate. Because success is the object and justification of a machine, while goodness only is the end and purpose of man. When this engine of organization begins to attain a vast size, and those who are mechanics are made into parts of the machine, then the personal man is eliminated to a phantom, everything becomes a revolution of policy carried out by the human parts of the machine, requiring no twinge of pity or moral responsibility. It is not unusual that even through this apparatus the moral nature of man tries to assert itself, but the whole series of ropes and pulleys creak and cry, the forces of the human heart become entangled among the forces of the human automaton, and only with difficulty can the moral purpose transmit itself into some tortured shape of result.
Clearly, as megacorporations have reached the scale of nation-states, this thus applies to them as well. These corporations, working efficiently like machines, are sufficiently capable to commit atrocities to carry out the will of its owners/shareholders. Insofar the need to maintain (or not, sigh) the myth of justice by the establishment that the corporations have behaved themselves, sparing us from the ugliness and horror, for now. With the level of layoffs and unemployment, the corporations can surely find people without conscience or those willing to compromise on theirs. We will see how this will turn out.
Remember how Google want to restrict installing applications outside of Play Store on Android (“sideloading”) with developer certification verification or something. It is about time we should see them try again even after taking a step back from the outcry back then.
I absolutely hate noisy UX and interruptions, but there's a big difference: cars don't get modified after you buy them. (Modern) software does. On the software development side, I also understand the need to reach out to users and try and let them know about new changes.
I've specifically fielded complaints about customers wanting to know when / how things change so that they can stay up to date. Now, there are definitely other ways of doing that outside of the app, but I do understand why it happens.
there's a big difference: cars don't get modified after you buy them. (Modern) software does.
This used to be true, but certainly isn't anymore. Few car manufacturers are as brazen as Tesla in this regard (who will just redesign and rearrange the user interface unannounced in an automatic software update), but for example my Volkswagen gets pushed software updates that, among other things, will crash the infotainment system while driving, including the speedometer. They also added a "store" where you can buy "digital extras" like local recommendations, a charge station locator and games.
I agree that we now often look towards metrics instead of trying to figure out what is best for the user and product by thinking hard about the problem. The question is, how do we change the metrics? Is this due to the top-level metric being "money made" or something else?
I think it's all about the money, more specifically the expectation of growth. The requirements and expectations for a complex piece of software will by necessity change as its userbase changes, therefore a company expecting 5x YoY growth will constantly change and tweak its product.
From a user perspective, I see it as companies constantly changing their target audience. For example, genius.com used to just be a site where you'd look up rap lyrics. But they decided they'd rather expand their audience to include everyone who wants to stay on top of music-related news across all genres. So now their site has changed and I don't like using it as much.
Is this due to the top-level metric being "money made" or something else?
Incentive structure, I suppose? It should have been maximization of satisfaction of user experience, it became maximization of value extraction; let users be annoyed, but not so much that they quit or switch to an alternative, and then slowly push this line of tolerance.. If there's healthy competition in the market, there's a greater chance of users' needs and experiences will get respected; but usually there's monopoly or oligopoly, concerted effort ("cartel") to buy or drive out competition and so on. The contrast between earning millions exploiting users and the meager donations, if any at all, while respecting users (and the whole spectrum in between) is so stark that it tests heart: the strength of conviction or ideological awareness effectively needed is not small.
For example, if I want to make a living off of entirely free and open source software, where do I start, like from scratch? How long do I need to toil before I start earning enough to be able to pay the bills? The stories I come across aren't optimistic. The current socio-economic conditions are unsustainable. How to fix this situation is beyond me.