The VPRO, a Dutch television channel, recently broadcasted a very interesting episode of their show ‘Tegenlicht’ about what makes us click. A very interesting topic that raised much reactions on social media. For the Dutch speaker, watch it at http://www.vpro.nl/programmas/tegenlicht/kijk/afleveringen/2016-2017/what-makes-you-click.html. For the English speaking students, here’s a small summary, which provides ground for a discussion on the topic.
The episode explains that the term ‘conversion rates’ is getting out of fashion. The next big thing in online research is persuasion. So-called ‘persuasion experts’ are researching the online possibilities to get us to make a purchase, or to spend more time on their websites. These websites are basically continually running A/B tests to find out the best way to design their digital services. During such a test, half of the visitors of a certain website will see version A of this website, whereas the other half will view version B. Afterwards, analysts can view the differences in behavior between the two groups to make inferences about what works and what doesn’t.
Dutch psychologist Bart Schuts warns us for the behavioral intelligence gap between the companies running these online social experiments and their customers. Their customers, who are convinced that the decisions they make are rational.
The problem here is not only the knowledge gap, but also the difference in goals. Whereas you as an individual may have goals in life such as learning to speak Spanish, or spend more time with your loved ones, the goal of many internet-based companies is to make their visitors spend as much time as possible on their website. This is proven by KPIs of for example Facebook, that is ‘time spent’, as opposed to ‘time spent well’, or ‘time spent happy’.
As Natasha Schüll, researcher at the NYU department of media, culture, and communication points out, this setup can be compared to the setup of that of a slot machine in a casino. Just like the slot machine, websites are more and more designed to ‘hook us in’, with an infinite repetitive loop combined with the promise of a reward, without knowing when this reward will be released. This type of setups is known to be very addictive and can therefore pose a serious threat to society.
Tristan Harris, who has worked for Google for a long time, started a movement to give a positive spin to the new possibilities by designing digital environments that help people reach their goals, instead of distracting from them. ‘Time well spent’ believes that we as consumers need to raise our voices indicating that we want to see a change. What are your thoughts on the matter?
