Benjamin Grosser
What Do Metrics Want? How Quantification Prescribes Social Interaction on Facebook
A Research Paper by Benjamin GrosserWhat are the effects of this enumeration, of these metrics that count our social interactions? In other words, how are the designs of Facebook leading us to act, and to interact in certain ways and not in others? For example, would we add as many friends if we weren’t constantly confronted with how many we have? Would we “like” as many ads if we weren’t told how many others liked them before us? Would we comment on others’ statuses as often if we weren’t told how many friends responded to each comment?
In this paper, I question the effects of metrics from three angles. First I examine how our need for personal worth, within the confines of capitalism, transforms into an insatiable “desire for more.” Second, with this desire in mind, I analyze the metric components of Facebook’s interface using a software studies methodology, exploring how these numbers function and how they act upon the site’s users. Finally, I discuss my software, born from my research-based artistic practice, called Facebook Demetricator (2012-present). Facebook Demetricator removes all metrics from the Facebook interface, inviting the site’s users to try the system without the numbers and to see how that removal changes their experience. With this free web browser extension, I aim to disrupt the prescribed sociality produced through metrics, enabling a social media culture less dependent on quantification.
Ensuring Excellence
…in so many of the best product companies there is an additional dimension that goes beyond individual empowered product teams, and even goes beyond achieving business results.
It has to do with ensuring a level of what I’ll refer to here as “excellence” although that is clearly a very ambiguous term.
Over the years, this concept has been referred to by many different names, always necessarily vague, but all striving to convey the same thing: “desirability,” “aha moments,” “wow factor,” “magic experiences,” or “customer delight,” to list just a few.
The concept is that an effective product that achieves results is critical, but sometimes we want to go even beyond that, to provide something special.
Maybe it’s because we believe this is needed to achieve the necessary value. Maybe it’s because the company has built its brand on inspiring customers.
Often this dimension shows up most clearly in product design, where functional, usable but uninspiring designs can often achieve our business results, but great design can propel us into this realm of the inspiring.
Do they really need it?
Does Google really need playful doodles to deliver the value they consistently provide in search results?
Does Stripe really need to spend so much energy on the design of its site and SDK’s, which after all, are primarily for the developers that use their API’s?
Does Apple really need to sweat the literally thousands of very subtle and often not consciously noticed interactions on its devices?