Narcissistic products suck

Kendra Shimmell is managing director at Cooper and creator of UX Boot Camp. Here’s some of our notes on her talk at Interaction South America 2014.

So my friend rented a car, as soon as he turns it on a head up display appeared on the windshield projecting the speedometer reading in it. Nice touchpoint!

Then he turns on the satellite radio and all of a sudden an advertisement comes on, the speedometer shrinks down and the display scrolls the phone number of the advertisement.

That’s so annoying. Why would they do that?

We’ll talk about 4 things today:

1. My definition of a narcissistic product
2. Stories people shared about narcissistic products
3. A few thoughts about why narcissistic products even exist
4. 5 simple principles to guide us in the right direction

Definition

Narcissistic products are similar to narcissistic people.

• They have an exaggerated sense of self importance.
• They have a lack in empathy and sensitivity to other’s circumstances.
• They expect others to go through with his ideas and plans.
• They require constant admiration
• They often monopolize conversations.
• They are jealous of others and believe others are jealous of them.

We wouldn’t hang out with people like that intentionally, right? The same is applicable to products.

A narcissistic product puts its own interest in front of the interest of other people that use it. These products typically demand attention disproportionate to the job we “hired” them to do.

There’s 3 major kinds:

• The attention carjacker
• The codependent game
• The sociopathic zen master
• The high maintenance kitchen

The attention carjacker

We’ve already visited this one, through the car hud advertisement example.

The codependent game

Wyatt downloaded a free game to pass a little time. The game’s point is to build a colony. He considered the game was boring and slow so he turned it off.

The next day in a meeting he gets a notification: “Your barracks are overflowing. You need to build more barracks.”, he turns it off. After a couple of minutes he gets another notification: “Your army is hungry, you need to harvest wheat”, he turns it off again.

He let this go on for two days, then he uninstalled it cause it wouldn’t let him play when he wanted to play.

As we can see, this is not an effective strategy for business either. There’s a misalignment between the product’s and the user’s interests. That’s a clear indicator of a posture that’s narcissistic.

The sociopathic zen master

Lea is director of strategy for Think. She has a lot of travel and she has a demanding job so she decided to learn how to pause and tried out a few meditation apps.
In the middle of a meeting she gets a notification: “Would you like a minute to calm?”.
She needs the app to help her meditate, not to tell her when to meditate. It was bugging her, so she uninstalled it.

The high maintenance kitchen

Peter saw and ad for a refrigerator that had Wi-Fi for recipes. But then it also connected to Wtitter. He was terrified. The last thing he needs is to receive updates from his refrigerator!

If we look behind scenes, the company wanted to be nest of refrigerators, they created a smart thermostat. Instead of having this thermostat work on its own, they are requiring user intervention and they shouldn’t.
Just because a pice of information is knowable, that does not mean someone needs to get notified about it … and a sensor doesn’t make appliances smart.

Users should be able to totally ignore the refrigerator and just get their cold beers whenever they want to. The appliance should be made for users to ignore it. That’s what a confident product is.

They should just keep our beers cold, and reduce our energy consumption. And maybe if I leave the door open send us a notification, but it’s better if it can just fix it on its own so we don’t ever have to find out.

A few thoughts

Why do narcissistic products even exist?

Teams loose perspective after working for many years on the same product. If you are working on a project and you tend to bring it up during dinner and your partner says “I don’t care”, that’s a clear sign of you developing a narcissistic posture. Be aware of those signs.

Data brings big money. The ad industry is worth $30 billion, yet they are betting on a commodity which has an unlimited supply. There’s other ways of connecting with people.

Our brains are changing. People are getting addicted to it, they refuse to get away from the devices. They get withdrawal if they are taking away from them. Studies show our white brain matter is decreasing progressively. Multitasking is getting us more distracted than ever. We are less able to complete a given task in time.

They are making piles of money. These products don’t work for you, you work for them. It’s totally pavlovian, you get a treat one time and you keep responding for ever.

The attention economy is short-sighted. Most people who close their facebook and twitter accounts do it because they want to spend more time with real people.

Say no to designing for codependency.

We can do better

Here’s 5 simple principles to guide us in the right direction:

1. Amplify the person not the product. What does the person wish for?
2. Get acquainted with reality. What do users do in their everyday life? Get observational. Carry a little journey and make notes.
3. Write a job description for the product
4. Job title
5. Description
6. Responsibilities
7. Minor functions (the little extras)
8. Supervisor. Who’s the product’s supervisor? Don’t outsource this role to the user.
9. Skills, qualifications, experience
10. Working hours
11. Define its character. What if it were human? Which of these manifestations makes more sense for it?
12. The muse
13. The friend
14. The concierge
15. The happy distraction
16. The coach
17. The utility guy
18. Respect your users’ time. Have a good reason for interrupting people.

Above all, please get out of the co-depence cycle.