Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

All software is like its makers full of attention-whoring. Its a nasty side-effect of the "identify with your work" ethics.

Thus i propose a new job, the ux-castrator. His only job, is to traverse the software and excise out tumorous attention hogging growths and limitations based upon thee.

Back to the chasm from which you came daemon, for the user needs not see you, know you, be aware of you and your works. You are a cog and until needed by your use-case, a invisible cog add infinitum. Not a bringer of gifts, not a master-of-metrics, no, bound to the circle of usefulness for all eternity and all the dark patterns shall not have you escape the runes.



It's usually a product-management failure that causes this. If you make your UX sufficiently invisible your department becomes invisible, and you get de-prioritized for promotion.

Management by metrics makes this worse, by forcing staff to game the metrics.


UX Castrator - i love it :) I'll try to give myself that role


The "Use feature ABC? Yes/Not now" dialog that shows up day by day until users click "Yes" increased usage of ABC by a significant amount!


Speaking of which, so many people here were wondering what specific shenanigans Google was getting at with forcing Gemini into google workspaces.

Well then they go on a superbowl ad and brag about "millions of people using Gemini"

Ladies and Gentlemen: You ever fake metrics for a commercial? I haven't.


I doubt it's tied to the commercial "millions" is probably easily met through the search blurb "AI overviews" or people who have accepted it on their phones or google homes


Chat GPT i want you to play user on any App i start, click all the dark pattern buttons and notifications. Pretend to be interested. Fill out the surveys. Then present the app without the cruft.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: