Tag: Product Management

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Unpopular Opinion: Stop Patronizing Users

I think this is fine by Facebook. It can be considered a dark pattern, but it serves its goal which is getting as many users as possible past this screen.

Facebook is a company that prioritizes growth (signups, engagement, time spent…etc) above all else. They measure everything and they know what they are doing.

I expect they tested multiple versions of that page and found this version to lead to the highest acceptance rate, without hurting engagement or leading users to leave the service.

I deleted my Facebook account two years ago. My feed became too toxic because of what’s happening in Egypt. I felt way better after doing this and I encourage everyone I know who is going through some depressive episodes to do the same.

However, this is only my perspective, and it doesn’t make the wellness argument right (the argument that spending time on Facebook makes people feel worse).

One point that didn’t get enough attention in Mark’s EU hearing is when he mentioned that Facebook researched the wellness topic. He said one of their findings is that people feel worse if they mindlessly scroll through their feed watching news and videos. They feel better and less lonely if they see content from their connections. That’s why Facebook altered the news feed algorithm to show more of this content.

I don’t like the current tone in the industry that patronizes users by considering them unable to decide for themselves. There is some truth to this argument but it is a slippery slope if we start thinking we know what’s right for people.

The internet is an open space and people are able to decide what’s good for them. If you think you can do better, do it, otherwise stop patronizing others considering them stripped of their free will.

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Bad execution: Google maps accessible routes

Google recently launched wheelchair accessible routes on Google maps. The feature is far from good.

1- The data is inaccurate: I used it today in Berlin and it took me to a station with no elevator. I verified by cross referencing with the local app. And there is no obvious feedback mechanism.

2- The routing is weird: sometimes it shows me longer route with later arrival time.

3- The UX sucks: someone using the wheelchair accessible option is less likely to not use it the next time. I have to go to the options menu and choose wheelchair accessible with every search query. Why can’t this be a default option?

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Blocking on YouTube

I don’t like Hussein Elgasmi. I blocked his channel on YouTube sometime ago thinking I won’t get his videos again. I was wrong.

As you see his channel is blocked, however I still got his latest video in my YouTube recommendations.

I am still getting Boshret Kheir in my autogenerated playlists. I always delete it when it is there.

It seems that blocking a channel and removing certain video/artist from your playlists aren’t strong enough signals for the YouTube recommendation algorithms.

I thought the former is a hard rule, not optional parameter for the algorithm. Maybe it is a bug, or no one thought of it.

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How do you know?

When I was at Booking.com, John Elabd was one of the best product owners. He used to challenge every assumption and take the leap to test ideas that were never tested in the company before.

One of the things I learned from John when someone gets too biased toward their argument on whether something is good or bad for customers, he would reply with a simple, yet powerful question

How do you know?

Every time he asked me this question I had to go back and think. Many times in product organizations people fear testing new ideas because of internal resistance, or fear of messing things up.

The culture at Booking.com is to be fearless, they have no problem someone screws things up and cost the company thousands or maybe millions of Euros, because they know at this cost people move fast, then you find the breakthroughs that cover up for all the mess.

So far it is working. That’s how I know.

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Time, Distance, Price, and Priority

This post is not about attacking Uber. I love Uber. It changed the way I move in Cairo, & it saved me few times in Amsterdam. It is about an edge case where the API didn’t provide the best price for the customer, and how to prioritize when there is a conflict.

The Story

Two week ago, I forgot my keys in the office and couldn’t go back to get them. I had an extra key with a friend so I went to his house to get it. I went with two of my friends and after we got the key, it was too late that there was no public transportation anymore. No transportation, no problem. Uber to the rescue.

I requested an Uber and we took it from my friend’s home to my home, then from my home to my friends’ home. The first part was easy, the second part I entered the address of my friends’ home  and I saw the recommended route on the map as in the screenshot:

Screenshot_20160218-004844

If you know me, I am an optimization freak. Being a fulltime taxi user back in Egypt made me paranoid about optimizing my route for both time & price. One wrong decision can make you pay double the price & not save much time. That’s why I highly take care of which route I am taking and how much it will result in payment.

What struck me in the above screenshot was, assuming it is a square from where the car now to the destination point, why move with the edges when you can cut it diagonally and save much more distance which means paying less?

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