[fat0wl]

I did end up skimming a few more sections to see if it picked up & it was still all hollow, common sense stuff eventually descending into predatory gamification/addiction tactics. I know there are a lot of burgeoning startup types on here but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE understand that responsible developers should strive to make a product that serves a real need for users. I want to make software that retains customers through convenience, features, value.

This guide reads more like those old guides for how to use SEO to drive traffic to your dung-heap. I don't know how others feel but I want to create a good experience for my users, not convince the masses that they are my users so I can go to some freemium lowest-common-denominator model.

Is web dev the wrong place for me or are we just in a bubble phase for these people who try to use their "clever interfaces" to regress humans to some animal state? (If you look at the chapter headers in this guide I don't think I'm out of line... its literally about addiction, sex, etc.)

[Yetanfou]

We seem to be in a phase where there are many solutions being developed in search for problems which either are so trivial as not to be worth solving or which don't exist in the first place. The PC and the 'net were the incubators for this phenomenon which really took flight when the 'net became small enough to fit in the average pocket. Now there are 'apps' for everyone and everything, all vying for your limited attention.

Alls you need to do is go back in time a bit, say 150 years, to see some parallels with the way that newfangled electricity thing was seen as the solution for all life's problems. Doctors waving Geissler tubes over their patients to cure, electrical beds to improve women's sex drive, electrical hairbrushes because, well, it's electrical and thus cures rheumatism and constipation, electrical baths - both dry and wet - to improve health and stamina, electric underwear to 'cure any ailment'.

And now? Electricity has certainly revolutionised society, but not by using it to cure constipation or zap innocent bathtubs. The web also revolutionised society, and the mobile 'net is poised to extend that revolution even further - but not by creating dating apps or yet another calendar-planner-todo-list-organiser.