| smartphones didn’t invent distraction Very true, but their designers are accomplice to the crime. I'm generally a nice guy but I harbor uncharacteristically visceral malice toward the a-hole who deemed it appropriate for my Android to let apps or the OS interrupt me by default. If you're that guy and reading this right now I hope you feel ashamed. I don't need to know my peasants in your game are idle. I don't care that the Gmail account I set up for alerting is missing a backup email address. My bank does NOT need me to check that my contact info is the same as it was a year ago. Even the OS updates can keep for a few days; I'll check for and apply them on my terms. And that Samsung Experience one which keeps sprouting up like a hydra head every time you kill it can go to hell [0]. Yes, Google has improved tooling and made it easier to snipe out unwanted notifications with precision (and I truly commend them for that), but I'm deeply concerned by the culture of disrespectful interruption that has normalized in the mobile ecosystem. Out of the box on a fresh install there's still way too much superfluous chuff and it takes month being subjected to it and correcting the behavior before I finally have some level of confidence my phone has been housebroken. It's more painful than teaching a puppy not to crap on the carpet. And it's spreading to other "smart" devices. My Roomba work me up with a chime at 3am last night to tell me it's out of battery after it got stuck somewhere the previous afternoon. (Turns out she "fell off a cliff" in my single-story apartment). Vendors: You aren't as important as you think. You really aren't. I wish Google and Apple let me bill publishers for my attention - maybe a fraction of a cent for every notification that's dismissed without interaction. That might finally incentivize them toward more judicial and thoughtful use of the "poke and prod" finger the platforms granted them. [0] https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/201141/how-to-re... |
The guy you want to be mad at is actually the author of this article! He's the one behind Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. As another comment said, I wonder how much of this is him trying to alleviate his conscience for the world he helped create when he started spreading his addiction causing message across business schools and companies.