UX for Good. The fight against big tech advertising behemoths misalignment
Many may not remember the first wave of tech companies being a total bust. Those that survived grew into monsters like yahoo. The next generation of big tech had to do it better and align with their customers in a more natural way to stand out.
Imagine the landing page for Yahoo near the turn of the century to even today. Even today still riddled with ads.
The real question in UX is what does the customer want to do when they go to a search engine. Google along with many other tech companies, whatsapp, Instagram, have shown that simplicity of design inline with customer goal creates larger no-lose scenarios that seem to based on imperical data solidify habit formations at a much higher rate.
Google home page design and UX main business model is to only display ads based on only things you are actually searching for. This allows Google to focus on a high hit rate of their search engine for accurate and useful information.
To this day and I am sure Google has tested this front page design a lot, there are no ads.
Most big tech companies have not found user and business alignment UX that create no-lose businesses. Facebook business model is keeping your eyes on their apps longer in order to display ads through endlessly scrolled feeds. Snapchat is capitalizing on sexualization of their original product for sending racey photos to draw a generation of men into premium snapchats of women looking to make a buck.
These business models are lucrative and provide a lot of value for a lot of people. The idea most will justify the usage of these apps will fall in line with some small benefit of the product. However, if we reframed the question from “Does this have any benefit?” to something more akin to a skilled tradesperson “Does this product get me to my goal overall more efficiently?”. Everyone's goals will be slightly different when it comes to the specifics and how to get there. No one's goal is to feel less connected, and more anxious with the problems of the world and comparing yourself to others.
The next generation of tech companies will have huge opportunities in providing similar value to users but aligning better with helping users not only set goals but reach goals that bring them everything they want. What are some of those problems and opportunities?
- User Goal: Creating and maintaining strong social connections.
- User Goal: Feel good. Mentally and Physically.
- User Goal: Life Managed with little to no effort.
- User Goal: Fun in the real world with people.
Only time will tell where these problems will lead too, but it’s nice to see some industries following a user centric approach and evolution. Let us hope we keep moving in that direction so that we move towards creating a generation of empowered consumers helping to make a better world.