Optimizing for Feelings(browsercompany.substack.com)
browsercompany.substack.com
Optimizing for Feelings
https://browsercompany.substack.com/p/optimizing-for-feelings
42 comments
Emotions are guidance, not binding. If you are not able to manage them on your own (an important aspect of adulthood), they will get into your way at some point in life. Yes, they are real, but acting on your emotions unconditionally is dangerous when you are in a position of responsibility or power.
A good piece of advice I've heard is that our goal should be to tune our intuitions so they can be reliable. Gut feelings are sometimes wrong and thus shouldn't be binding, but if we can improve their accuracy they can be extremely, extremely helpful.
Is there evidence that we can train our intuitions? I'm reminded of the expert art assessor in Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink" who immediately knew a sculpture was a forgery by gut instinct. (I know Gladwell's writing isn't often held in high regard, but it's a good illustration for my question). Surely, we aren't inborn with the ability to assess art validity, implying it's a trainable 'instinct'.
Is there evidence that we can train our intuitions? I'm reminded of the expert art assessor in Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink" who immediately knew a sculpture was a forgery by gut instinct. (I know Gladwell's writing isn't often held in high regard, but it's a good illustration for my question). Surely, we aren't inborn with the ability to assess art validity, implying it's a trainable 'instinct'.
Don't we also recognize a horse by "gut instinct" or intuition? It is not that the jot down notes to make up our mind between a horse and a zebra. What we instantaneously identify does not come from nowhere, it is that our pattern recognition happens below our conscience. And this move from conscious to other-than-conscious happens for any simple or complex skill, when the latter is of course properly practiced, which means, most often, a lot.
Is the example provided by Gladwell different from the instance of "something is off" that many of us had when we got to our home and something, a plant, a chair, or something barely noticeable like a medal, had been moved elsewhere, and we could not explain why our "off" button went off?
If many among us had spent a lot of time dealing with art and forged art we would have acquired, conditioned on our "talent", similar "gut feelings" with respect to original and forged art.
Is the example provided by Gladwell different from the instance of "something is off" that many of us had when we got to our home and something, a plant, a chair, or something barely noticeable like a medal, had been moved elsewhere, and we could not explain why our "off" button went off?
If many among us had spent a lot of time dealing with art and forged art we would have acquired, conditioned on our "talent", similar "gut feelings" with respect to original and forged art.
I didn’t get a sense from the article or post you’re replying to that acting on emotion unconditionally was desirable.
"Optimizing for feelings" as suggested by the article is not about guiding your decisions purely on emotions; it's about designing products or services taking them into account.
When you average over the range of users, conveying the right emotions is an important feature on itself, even if it's not a functional requirement; a product that elicits positive feelings will be better that one that engenders negative ones. Developers ignore this tenet at their own risk, often creating functionally correct programs that their users hate to use because of their "death by 100 papercuts" interfaces.
UX people know that emotionally positive interfaces work better than equivalent ugly and cumbersome interfaces. Marketing people live their entire careers on generating those positive feelings artificially. Integrating into product and service design the creation of positive feelings of the kind that benefit users would be something that is beneficial to all of us, rather than the usual approach of maximising profits by capturing and directing customer expectations to profit-maximising environments.
When you average over the range of users, conveying the right emotions is an important feature on itself, even if it's not a functional requirement; a product that elicits positive feelings will be better that one that engenders negative ones. Developers ignore this tenet at their own risk, often creating functionally correct programs that their users hate to use because of their "death by 100 papercuts" interfaces.
UX people know that emotionally positive interfaces work better than equivalent ugly and cumbersome interfaces. Marketing people live their entire careers on generating those positive feelings artificially. Integrating into product and service design the creation of positive feelings of the kind that benefit users would be something that is beneficial to all of us, rather than the usual approach of maximising profits by capturing and directing customer expectations to profit-maximising environments.
for that matter, unconditional anything is dangerous
unconditional rationalism seem to lead to a meaningless life (i.e. the shitty kind of nihilism)
unconditionally doing something because "rationality" demands it strikes me as mental gymnastics to let some symbolic-computable method dictate what we do... to follow this unconditionally is just as dumb as acting only on one's emotions
we have (are able to do) both; so let's use both.
unconditional rationalism seem to lead to a meaningless life (i.e. the shitty kind of nihilism)
unconditionally doing something because "rationality" demands it strikes me as mental gymnastics to let some symbolic-computable method dictate what we do... to follow this unconditionally is just as dumb as acting only on one's emotions
we have (are able to do) both; so let's use both.
>doing something because "rationality" demands it strikes me as mental
It's best if we replace "rational" for "what I think makes sense" or "what I think is the best course of action", etc...
Which is, of course, self-evidently what one should do.
"Acting rational" is optimizing one's utility function to the best of their abilities and knowledge. It says nothing about the utility function itself, and using unconscious/emotional/instinctive thinking leads to better results for their appropriate places (including figuring out the utility function/what you care about)
You don't do mathematics to catch a ball thrown at you.
It's best if we replace "rational" for "what I think makes sense" or "what I think is the best course of action", etc...
Which is, of course, self-evidently what one should do.
"Acting rational" is optimizing one's utility function to the best of their abilities and knowledge. It says nothing about the utility function itself, and using unconscious/emotional/instinctive thinking leads to better results for their appropriate places (including figuring out the utility function/what you care about)
You don't do mathematics to catch a ball thrown at you.
I was raised to believe that emotions / "feelings" were something that happens to you (being human and all that) due to chemicals in your brain and body, and you cannot entirely control that aspect of things, but that your actions are indeed a thing you do have control over, and that falls entirely upon each individual human to control for themselves, despite any other factors such as emotion. While you may not easily be able to choose how you feel, you can choose what you do, and how you act or react. Emotion can as you say "guide", but cannot force your actions. That's all on you (or me, or anyone else).
I especially agree with your final statement there about the dangers when in a position of responsibility or "power". It's those times when people really should strive harder than usual to fall back on logic and facts despite any emotional reactions they may be leaning toward, although if the emotion they're feeling is "empathy", they might want to let at least a little of that leak through and "guide" their logical response to some degree.
I especially agree with your final statement there about the dangers when in a position of responsibility or "power". It's those times when people really should strive harder than usual to fall back on logic and facts despite any emotional reactions they may be leaning toward, although if the emotion they're feeling is "empathy", they might want to let at least a little of that leak through and "guide" their logical response to some degree.
> your actions are indeed a thing you do have control over,
And one's thoughts, which also affect the feelings
Meditation = a bit practicing being in control over one's thoughts?
And one's thoughts, which also affect the feelings
Meditation = a bit practicing being in control over one's thoughts?
Probably there are as many emotional reactions to some given aspect of software as there are people. How do you optimize for every individual?
My 'angle' on this is about emotion of people working on the software project. If what you are building feels wrong, it probably is. Sure, some clever market-speak might be able to neutralize that emotion by showing a more flattering angle, but the initial reaction is usually the correct one; your conscious mind just hasn't caught up yet.
If companies and individuals followed their intuition rather than being a slave to a paycheck, we'd likely not have the many of the dark patterns and creep-tech we have now. People ultimately choose to implement their own dystopia, a few individuals cannot do it all with their own hands. People should listen to their conscience and vote with their feet.
However, it isn't solely the responsibility of the individuals involved to put the brakes on bad, unethical software. It is also up to governments to ensure that people feel safe to challenge their employer. It is also up to companies to foster a culture of doing right, then profiting, rather than profit at any cost.
I'll go ahead and give the U.S. government and corporations an F grade on that right now.
If companies and individuals followed their intuition rather than being a slave to a paycheck, we'd likely not have the many of the dark patterns and creep-tech we have now. People ultimately choose to implement their own dystopia, a few individuals cannot do it all with their own hands. People should listen to their conscience and vote with their feet.
However, it isn't solely the responsibility of the individuals involved to put the brakes on bad, unethical software. It is also up to governments to ensure that people feel safe to challenge their employer. It is also up to companies to foster a culture of doing right, then profiting, rather than profit at any cost.
I'll go ahead and give the U.S. government and corporations an F grade on that right now.
You take cues from our friends in the marketing department. You don’t optimize for everyone. You niche down to the exact group of people you want to optimize for, find their commonalities, and optimize for those.
Ignoring a person and self's irrational and emotional side is one of the most irrational quirks of so-called rationalists.
The other side of it is mediocrity.
Emotions point in a direction. They don't inform the user of what knowledge, time and meaning that may be needed along the way.
Emotional reasoning often directs people to a mediocre end, most commonly seen in failed indie video games or niche tech projects constantly worked on with no end in sight. People end up in nurturing tribes trying to follow an irrational direction without the higher meaning needed to convert a direction into a result. Eventually time catches up to all of them and you don't hear about the nothing that comes of it.
Your gut is like a wet finger in the wind, it indicates a direction of the prevailing winds.
I think the article was talking more about feelings, sensation and desirability than emotions.
Emotions point in a direction. They don't inform the user of what knowledge, time and meaning that may be needed along the way.
Emotional reasoning often directs people to a mediocre end, most commonly seen in failed indie video games or niche tech projects constantly worked on with no end in sight. People end up in nurturing tribes trying to follow an irrational direction without the higher meaning needed to convert a direction into a result. Eventually time catches up to all of them and you don't hear about the nothing that comes of it.
Your gut is like a wet finger in the wind, it indicates a direction of the prevailing winds.
I think the article was talking more about feelings, sensation and desirability than emotions.
I would love to proven wrong but I’m skeptical that a company started 2 years ago with $18 million of Series A VC funding to repay and no shipping product is going to be able to optimize for anything but growth and getting acquired
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/the-browser-company
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/the-browser-company
They've been keeping it close to the chest, I think. But their browser exists and I believe is called Arc.
I'm sure it exists in some form, but it's not currently a shipping product
I'm pretty sure people are actually using it.
A private beta is not what I’d consider a shipping product, but you may have a different definition of that
Related advice for building your professional network over the course of a career: "People won't remember what you said. They might remember what you did. They will remember how you made them feel."
this is very true
This is what I do (I tend to write software that I like to use). Enjoyment and positive feelings are important components of my work.
But I doubt my stuff would be considered "commercially feasible," and I probably wouldn't get VCs interested.
I don't care. I'm grumpy, battle-scarred, and quite good at what I do. I'm in the enviable position (although I suspect many here would not "envy" me) of not needing to beg others to validate my work (or pay for it), so I'm fairly free to do what I want to do, as opposed to what I have to do. This won't get me fame and riches, but does make me happy.
When optimizing for emotions, we need to be very, very sensitive to our audience. One simple example, is high-key, vs. low-key. High-key stuff is usually against a white background, and low-key stuff is usually against a black background.
White and black trigger all sorts of emotions, and one's culture plays a big part of that (like, black is the sign of mourning, in the US, but white is the sign of mourning, in Japan).
One way that I deal with this, is respecting Dark Mode.
Purple is also another color that can trigger different emotional responses, based on culture (and what it is paired with).
Americans tend to like simple, uncluttered, design-heavy interfaces, while Japanese tend to like busy, colorful interfaces, without as much attention paid to design.
etc., ad nauseam.
But I doubt my stuff would be considered "commercially feasible," and I probably wouldn't get VCs interested.
I don't care. I'm grumpy, battle-scarred, and quite good at what I do. I'm in the enviable position (although I suspect many here would not "envy" me) of not needing to beg others to validate my work (or pay for it), so I'm fairly free to do what I want to do, as opposed to what I have to do. This won't get me fame and riches, but does make me happy.
When optimizing for emotions, we need to be very, very sensitive to our audience. One simple example, is high-key, vs. low-key. High-key stuff is usually against a white background, and low-key stuff is usually against a black background.
White and black trigger all sorts of emotions, and one's culture plays a big part of that (like, black is the sign of mourning, in the US, but white is the sign of mourning, in Japan).
One way that I deal with this, is respecting Dark Mode.
Purple is also another color that can trigger different emotional responses, based on culture (and what it is paired with).
Americans tend to like simple, uncluttered, design-heavy interfaces, while Japanese tend to like busy, colorful interfaces, without as much attention paid to design.
etc., ad nauseam.
Unfortunately I'm not sure people are even equipped to trust their own feelings anymore. Even in many spaces where people do have agency of how they're designed I've noticed a marked convergence in tastes and preferences over the years. We used to call it "Pinterest aesthetic" and now it's an Instagram or TikTok aesthetic but so many of the choices people make in lighting, styles of furniture, potted plants, and so on themselves feel kind of generic. Often like a cheap imitation of an aesthetic that predominates online. I don't know if this is a consequence of algorithmic recommendations tuning peoples' aesthetic sensibilities all in the same direction or if it's filtering down to the products on offer to where their options are all constrained. But it's depressing nevertheless.
Part of it could just be an age thing. As an elder-millennial I came of age during the peak of vintage/thrifting hipster culture. There was a pretty vibrant spirit of mixing and matching and putting things together from myriad influences before it all got blended into a generic paste of flannel and thick-rimmed eyeglasses.
Part of it could just be an age thing. As an elder-millennial I came of age during the peak of vintage/thrifting hipster culture. There was a pretty vibrant spirit of mixing and matching and putting things together from myriad influences before it all got blended into a generic paste of flannel and thick-rimmed eyeglasses.
"Writing manifestos about the state of the industry has never really been our thing." Except, their website feels like a big ol manifesto. And when I read it the first time, I got excited.
But the more I read stuff like this, the more suspicious I get, and I get hit by manifesto fatigue. I want to see the product, and I would love to see something new in the browser world.
The vision is beautiful, and I'm curious to see how that turns into a usable product. I'm pretty sure I don't want my go-to browser to be an artwork or a build-it-yourself type of thing.
Function often comes before the feeling for a reason. A restaurant can't exist without its functionality. That "beloved dish that never fails" is not a feeling but a good product.
I have a strong feeling this will be a very niche product. I would also love to be proven wrong.
But the more I read stuff like this, the more suspicious I get, and I get hit by manifesto fatigue. I want to see the product, and I would love to see something new in the browser world.
The vision is beautiful, and I'm curious to see how that turns into a usable product. I'm pretty sure I don't want my go-to browser to be an artwork or a build-it-yourself type of thing.
Function often comes before the feeling for a reason. A restaurant can't exist without its functionality. That "beloved dish that never fails" is not a feeling but a good product.
I have a strong feeling this will be a very niche product. I would also love to be proven wrong.
If you want to see the browser, you can do so here: https://browser.kagi.com
(And if you're on MacOS, you can actually try it. I haven't.)
(And if you're on MacOS, you can actually try it. I haven't.)
I really like this but it's slightly different from how I think. I don't think "quirky" and "unique" are all that essential. We don't fall in love with the tilt of the ceiling fan in the restaurant, we fall in
love with something else, and all the quirky details get a halo from that. The halo is so powerful that bland can become its own kind of beautiful, as the Costco cult demonstrates. Browsers like Chrome and Firefox are nothing but a collage of different shades of gray rectangles and we love them.
I think what really matters is simple and almost tautologically obvious. Just... make your product really good at what it's supposed to be for.
Facebook sucks because it's a social network that isn't designed for people to be social. Chrome was great when it was introduced because it was an internet browser that made browsing the internet extremely fast, easy, and organized (tabs!).
I think what really matters is simple and almost tautologically obvious. Just... make your product really good at what it's supposed to be for.
Facebook sucks because it's a social network that isn't designed for people to be social. Chrome was great when it was introduced because it was an internet browser that made browsing the internet extremely fast, easy, and organized (tabs!).
> We optimize for feelings. Our own, and of those we serve.
I wonder what that would mean in practice. Optimising for your own feelings is easy, but when you have 100s, let alone millions, of users, what can you possibly know about their feelings? How about conflicting feelings, within the same person, or between different people?
I wonder what that would mean in practice. Optimising for your own feelings is easy, but when you have 100s, let alone millions, of users, what can you possibly know about their feelings? How about conflicting feelings, within the same person, or between different people?
I am very hopeful for this project. I feel like this article perfectly sums up how I feel like software should be and how it should feel to use and also life in general. Software should be a tool to use and enjoy, not something that optimizes to take more of our time.
Optimization has crept into our lives too much. Optimization of decision making that sucks the fun out of everything and makes activities inaccessible to anyone but those who want to optimize for it seems to be the predominant way of thinking. "How to optimize your YouTube channel for view, pick this $1000 bicycle wheel in order to optimize your efficiency by 1%.." I could go on forever. I joined the waitlist and I am excited to see what comes out of this project.
Optimization has crept into our lives too much. Optimization of decision making that sucks the fun out of everything and makes activities inaccessible to anyone but those who want to optimize for it seems to be the predominant way of thinking. "How to optimize your YouTube channel for view, pick this $1000 bicycle wheel in order to optimize your efficiency by 1%.." I could go on forever. I joined the waitlist and I am excited to see what comes out of this project.
I have an alternative proposal: optimize for the product of usefulness and performance.
That is, optimize for (number of tasks user performs using your software) / (time spent per task)
Actually measurable, too.
That is, optimize for (number of tasks user performs using your software) / (time spent per task)
Actually measurable, too.
I wish browser companies would just optimize for building a good browser.
When they have too much money and not enough ideas, they end up writing hipster manifestos and end up like Mozilla.
When they have too much money and not enough ideas, they end up writing hipster manifestos and end up like Mozilla.
Feelings and emotions relate to values, which are learned at an earlier age, and cannot be easily changed. So yes to this view, but let's understand better what drives it from behind and use it in the overall frame. Are we not at all times optimizing for the values of the perceived majority?
Content aside, that’s an excellent font.
Your comment is optimal with regard to my feelings. Thank you.
I'd call it a "screen serif" https://blog.obormot.net/Screen-serif-fonts
Hunter S. Thompson would have made one shitty PM. God bless anyone who works at this company.
Has anyone optimized for the feelings of web developers?
feelings are just metrics that are harder to measure.
The concept that we do things based on our emotions will strike a certain type of individual as wrong, simply because they've become so used to looking at things like a machine.
To that person I say: you are doing it right now. You are doing things based on your emotion, and it doesn't always feel... good, but it is how humans work.
Humans are highly evolved organisms, and our emotions emerge from a vast collection of observations (both conscious and unconscious) made by our nervous system. Especially important is the unconscious aspects of emotion. We can often tell things are rotten before we can describe why.
Trusting our gut is underrated.