Tag: Internet

Link: AMP Thoughts

Oh, AMP. You (theoretically) mean well, but you’re an ethical swampland. In that vein, some links to share: First, Jeremy Keith has an article, Ends and Means, that is worth reading, and explores both the quagmire that is AMP, and also the well-meaning mess that Mozilla is currently planning regarding locking all new features (including unrelated things like CSS) to only work if you’re on HTTPS.

Second, Chris Coyler over at CSS Tricks wrote a follow-up, AMP News, which is also worth a read (and links to multiple other writers who are discussing this topic).

It’s pretty obvious where I land on this particular topic (I mean, I even co-signed the AMP Letter). I just don’t think paternalistic behavior jives well with a message of an open internet. A real question I think they (and others) should be asking is: is this technology a management-change away from being unethical? If so, maybe you should reconsider.

Link: Maps and How Advertising Influences User Experience

Kottke links to an article comparing time estimates between Apple Maps, Google Maps, and Waze by Artur Grabowski. The observations are interesting (if imperfect, as the author notes, since there were only so many variables he was able to control for): Waze tended to underestimate how long a trip would take, while Apple Maps tended to overestimate. As Artur notes, this has an impact on the user experience:

For Apple, Maps is a basic solution for its average user who wants a maps solution out of the box. Apple Maps does not directly drive ad or subscription revenue for Apple so there is less reason for Apple to incentivize iOS users to use Apple Maps over other solutions. However, Apple does care about user experience, and sandbagging trip time estimates so that users arrive at their destination on time results in a great user experience. Hence, I believe that Apple is intentionally conservative with estimated arrival times.

At the other extreme, Waze (Alphabet) makes money through ads when you use their app. What better way to get people to use your navigation app than by over-promising short trip times when no one takes the time to record data and realize that you under-deliver? If an unsuspecting user opens Apple Maps and sees a 34-minute route and compares that to 30-minutes in Waze, the deed is done. Now Waze has a life-long customer who doesn’t realize they’ve been hoodwinked and Waze can throw at them stupidly annoying ads.

That’s the thing: advertising definitely impacts user experience, and it’s often in more subtle ways than just product placement or overt advertising. It can impact how designers and developers think about what they’re building, and what they choose to focus on. You can see it elsewhere, too: think about the shift in newsfeeds away from a chronological feed and towards an algorithmic one. As Jason notes:

If that’s happening with your mapping app, just think of how your search results, Facebook newsfeed, and Instagram feed are manipulated to be more amenable to advertising.

Link: Is Medium Following The Facebook Playbook?

Via Warren Ellis, Stowe Boyd has an article wondering Is Medium Following The Facebook Playbook? (It’s sort of ironic that the post is on Medium, but whatever.) This is written sort of in response to an interview with Matt Klinman by Sarah Aswell, How Facebook is Killing Comedy, which is also well worth your time to read.

Ev Williams, the founder and CEO of Medium, is actively discouraging the publication model that was what attracted a long list of publishers to the platform, which provided at least a few mechanisms for individual expression at the publication level: ordering of stories on the home page, recruiting contributions, and organizing by topics. Many of those publishers have left, or abandoned their publications. (I shut down Work Futures (workfutures.io) a few weeks ago, and departed for Substack and the recast Work Futures (workfutures.org).)

Now, Medium wants to manage all publishing and curation, with its own editorial staff and algorithms. A perfectly designed forest, as Klinsman suggests.

Link: Be Kind, Design

Over at Medium, Nat Dudley has a nice (lengthy, well researched with clear examples) article, Be Kind, Design, based on a talk they recently gave. Worth some consideration.

You might be asking yourselves why we’re the ones who have to care about this. After all, everyone else is treating their customers poorly, so why should we be different.

It’s a matter of scale. Like Penalosa’s urgency for good urban design in cities, we need to care because our work has reach. The work we do is part of every industry on the planet. We are defining or redefining the interaction models for every part of society, and we’re doing it at a scale we’ve never experienced before. Changes we make can affect millions of people in seconds without their knowledge or consent. Decisions we make can reinforce existing power structures and biases, or they can break them down.

Link: Last Blog Standing

Over at Nieman Lab, Laura Hazard Owen has a nice interview with Jason Kottke about blogging, Last blog standing, “last guy dancing”. A salient bit:

There has to be room in our culture for that type of stuff — that stuff that is inspirational and aspirational — because it provides some sort of hope that we can actually have more of that in our lives, rather than less.

It’s like that quote from John Adams. I have it pulled up here. “I must study politics and war, that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.”

That’s a really interesting way to think about progress. Not everyone is going to be on that continuum at the same time, but I think the goal should be to get more people moving toward it.

Link: palm.computer

Some of the more old-school amongst us might remember Palm OS, and some of the experiments done around the late 90s. Someone built a… thing. Not really an emulator, but sort of an homage/recreation, at palm.computer. Explore it, feel the pain, feel the joy. Note the attention to the little details, like the bizarre rendering patterns, and the artifacts in the sponsored content videos. This is clearly a labor of love.

Link: New Coalition for Humane Technology

Over at the New York Times, Early Facebook and Google Employees Form Coalition to Fight What They Built. The article is mostly a press release for some of the efforts the new Center for Humane Technology is doing, but I wanted to call it out because (as may be clear from some of my recent posts in the past few months) it’s a topic I care about.