And when they do, it always has to be something like "No, thanks". Always with the forced gratitude. Never a good old "No, FUCK OFF" to accommodate me.
"never ask me again" is hard because it is essentially a setting, and if you introduce a setting, you need a way to turn it back off, including the design, UX work, localization work, testing work etc. that is involved in adding a new switch. If you get to 1000 of these, you probably need categorization and search. Oh, and you need to track which ones are even relevant for that user; it doesn't make sense to ask a German to link their Comcast account. You need to make it all work consistently across platforms, except for the settings that should only work on one platform. You get my point.
"remind me later" is simple; you check if there are any children accounts, if no, ask to create one with probability p. There is no state. There is no setting. There is no "what if I accidentally clicked no but want to reverse that decision, where do I go" problem.
As someone who’s worked on dark patterns like this in the past, I can assure you, difficulty of creating a new setting is not the reason for the “show this less” pattern.
It’s much more simple: if a “permanently off” setting is worse for metrics, it won’t get built that way.
All of these elements are table stakes for software that people will use and application settings is not a “hard” problem.
Normally it would just be lazy design to annoy the shit out of your users with nags instead of giving them settings but this approach seems to be pervasive at companies that make billions off this software so I can only conclude that it’s intentional.
I can sympathise with the author, would be nice to get a more streamlined experience for those without kids, but:
> The world doesn't revolve around children.
Well, that’s the thing. It kind of does. And these days there’s an argument to be made that the world doesn’t value children enough. As long as fertility is below 2.1 that’s objectively true. It means we’re dying out.
If the author wants to be able to retire, there needs to be kids, and the industrialised world has made that too undesirable.
Honestly this feels like a trifle compared to the many UX atrocities out there. Sometimes you have to make the UI more inconvenient for some to make it more convenient for others
The instantaneous fertility rate dipping below replacement level does not mean humanity dying out. It might mean that this particular civilization with this particular population level is. Infinite growth ad infinitum leads to an inevitable (and likely catastrophic) collapse. No one can say with certainty what the "correct" fertility rate is. That being said, if a society is set up as a pyramid scheme, it must have infinite growth to sustain itself so I won't argue that this way of life is likely dying.
We've already passed several Malthusian moments because we invent stuff that allows growth to continue. 50% of all nitrogen in human tissue came from a process we invented like 70 years ago. And we're nowhere near fundamental constraints like energy absorption of the sun onto the earth, and sqft of land per human.
How does fertility dropping below 2.1 have anything to do with not valuing kids? I'd say its because we do value kids and don't value the adults that are choosing not to bring more kids into the world.
I don’t know about valuing kids - maybe they are valued enough, in a very direct sense.
But, as a parent of three kids, it’s very very obvious that modern western society is not really made for bringing up children in a good way. I could list multiple reasons, but IMO the most important one is that raising children with 1-2 parents, and not as a tribe or colocated big family, is super hard and a non-stop grind. It’s not possible to retrofit this kind of support with government mediated interventions, like gratis kindergarten, financial support, etc. You are always the first and last in line, as a typical, western parent. I can totally understand anyone who doesn’t want that kind of constant stress and often unhappiness in their lives.
No, if we truly valued children, we would seek to make more children, and devote substantial portions of our lives and resources to raising children.
But increasingly, society doesn’t give a shit about children. People value more their own individual autonomy, their vacations, their luxury goods, their comfort, over the responsibility and work involved in raising children. Children have lower value than ever in this world, reduced to units of potential future economic output, or accessories for your next instagram reel or photo.
> Well, that’s the thing. It kind of does. And these days there’s an argument to be made that the world doesn’t value children enough. As long as fertility is below 2.1 that’s objectively true. It means we’re dying out.
We, as in humanity, are not dying out. While statisticians observe sinking fertility rates globally [1], reproduction is still going strong. In fact, humanity is still growing.
It was 4.9 in the 50's. Projected to be 1.8 by 2100.
2.1 is considered to be replacement level.
The parts of the world that hold this number up don't produce people productive enough to support the social programs elderly people rely on in the west.
I’m not convinced that a call to emotional trauma is really a factor here (I know a lot of folks that have lost kids, and the streaming profiles don’t even move the trauma needle).
Rather, it’s a basic usability issue, with extra clicks/taps/whatever required, or an overly-complex presentation, requiring extra attention. Also, as noted in another comment, every UI element increases the opportunity for misfires.
In The Days of Yore, we used to “score” our UI, by how many taps/clicks it took, to accomplish tasks, or how long it took, to understand a screen. The lower, the better. I’m a bit of an anachronism, as I still do that.
My experience, is that implementing intuitive, low-interaction UI is really hard. I’m in the middle of designing a screen with drag-and-drop support for a matrix of icons. I’ve been working on it for a couple of days, already, and probably have at least a couple more to go. Lot of work, for just one screen. It’s all about removing unnecessary interactions, and implementing subtle, intuitive affordances. Also, symbolic debugging of UICollectionView is a real bitch. The debugger borks the drag and drop, so I have to use a bunch of print() statements.
I think most software is done by folks that aren’t willing to “go the extra mile,” to design and implement truly intuitive UI.
Or most likely, there are oxygen wasters whose performance is measured based on "engagement", aka how much human time they wasted. Designing a low-interaction UI is not in their best interests in that case.
Yeah this is just a minor example of enshittification, there's no more to it than that. Netflix and other modern software like it aren't written for customer they are written to extract maximum "value" from "users". They want to push the kids account thing because they think it will make them money. Ux is only important to the extend it's so bad it creates churn, it's not something they care about optimizing.
I don't quite understand the problem here. On every device I use Netflix, it defaults to highlighting the last used profile. So essentially, it takes two 'OK's to login - once to launch the app, once to select the profile.
I don't see how the existence of a children's profile bothers anyone so much. It's not extra work. You don't have to scroll past it or anything. It's just a nonoffensive thing that sits there if you ever need it on the initial profile page.
If you want a use case, when i want to start a movie while pedaling on my elliptical trainer i do manage once in a while to hit the children profile instead of mine ...
IPlayer is especially poorly designed in that if there is only 1 adult account you still have to get through the profile screen which is your 1 adult account and a “do you want to setup a child account” button
Yeah, his Channel 4 complaint was completely valid, but I feel like it would have been a better article about examples of poor implementation like that than just a blanket anti-kid statement, where most apps handle it perfectly reasonably.
I'm not sure what kind of take this is. If you've lost a child, you don't need a button on your Netflix screen to remind you of the tragedy you've been through. No bereaved parent is going through life ignoring their child's passing only for a Netflix button to be the straw that breaks the camel's back.
I think that would be pretty bad UI for people who actually use more than one profile, as a) it'd be very easy to use accidentally use the wrong profile and b) it's not super easy to switch the profile when your within one (and making it easy probably lands you at the current design).
At the same time, the existing one is fine for people (like me) who only use one -- as GP says, on a TV it's just a double confirm, if designed well. That said, for accounts that only have a single profile, I'm not sure why you'd show the select in the first place. Hide it by default, show it when the user creates a sub profile. DOS didn't have a login prompt.
I have a very nice television (C series LG), with apps built in to the TV. It has a feature where it shows your “currently watched” for various apps - iPlayer, prime, 4OD, etc. but each app implements their own account select choice prompt that block those features from working. Prime very regularly shows me 5 seconds of content, then the account switch, then an ad.
It’s a horrible, horrible UX and is a perfect example of PM’s going wild and not being pushed back on by other disciplines. It’s such a shame.
> Nothing good can come from giving your TV Internet access.
> Get a <...> Android box.
Why are you ok for Google to spy on you but not LG?
There's absolutely 0 guarantee that a no name android box isn't doing the same, if not worse than what LG and Samsung are doing.
Another device adds another failure point, possibly another remote (lets be honest, HDMI-CEC is not reliable. It's been almost 20 years and device support is still spotty and bug ridden on both sides), extra complexity, extra space. You might want that choice and freedom, and that's absolutely fine, but I'd rather not thanks.
If you go the route of an Android box then be careful with what brand you buy. A couple of years ago a lot of no-name ones came with malware installed.
It doesn't matter! I literally never connected my LG TV to wifi, but then after my Apple TV updated, the eARC pass through stopped working and wouldn't work until I updated the TV, which was only passing through the HDMI signal...
We all know how easy it would be to add an option to hide a profile, set one as default or add a «Yes, I do actually agree to watch R-rated stuff and stop asking me about it!».
Feature creep and scope creep are real, but if you want to add a feature for a kids profile then put «disable kids profile» as part of the scope for that task.
As someone with kids I find it really useful to have kids profiles. Netflix one is particularly good, I can configure a general age group and block individual shows.
Our national TV app comes in two flavours, a general app and a specific one for kids. Makes it easier to deploy features for kids without adding any nagging popups for adults.
This is an odd thing to be annoyed about. Maybe it brings back bad memories for parents who’ve lost a child, but you know else does? Going outside and seeing a primary school, childcare, playgrounds, children on the street. It’s unavoidable, it’s not worth building your design around. Presumably it’s a common enough option that people choose that, otherwise they’d get rid of it.
Readit News
Ha tell that to product managers who shove very useful reminders to enable notifications, sync contacts, auto upgrade, etc.
They offer all sorts of choices like remind me later, not now, i will do this later, don't remind me for one week, not now, tell me more etc ...
But never the option to "no, and never ask me again".
They play dumb in so many creative ways it is jarring.
Yeah.
"remind me later" is simple; you check if there are any children accounts, if no, ask to create one with probability p. There is no state. There is no setting. There is no "what if I accidentally clicked no but want to reverse that decision, where do I go" problem.
It’s much more simple: if a “permanently off” setting is worse for metrics, it won’t get built that way.
Normally it would just be lazy design to annoy the shit out of your users with nags instead of giving them settings but this approach seems to be pervasive at companies that make billions off this software so I can only conclude that it’s intentional.
Yes there is, you now can't find the setting, because it doesn't exist, and you need to wait for it to reappear based on some unknown trigger.
> The world doesn't revolve around children.
Well, that’s the thing. It kind of does. And these days there’s an argument to be made that the world doesn’t value children enough. As long as fertility is below 2.1 that’s objectively true. It means we’re dying out.
If the author wants to be able to retire, there needs to be kids, and the industrialised world has made that too undesirable.
Honestly this feels like a trifle compared to the many UX atrocities out there. Sometimes you have to make the UI more inconvenient for some to make it more convenient for others
But, as a parent of three kids, it’s very very obvious that modern western society is not really made for bringing up children in a good way. I could list multiple reasons, but IMO the most important one is that raising children with 1-2 parents, and not as a tribe or colocated big family, is super hard and a non-stop grind. It’s not possible to retrofit this kind of support with government mediated interventions, like gratis kindergarten, financial support, etc. You are always the first and last in line, as a typical, western parent. I can totally understand anyone who doesn’t want that kind of constant stress and often unhappiness in their lives.
But increasingly, society doesn’t give a shit about children. People value more their own individual autonomy, their vacations, their luxury goods, their comfort, over the responsibility and work involved in raising children. Children have lower value than ever in this world, reduced to units of potential future economic output, or accessories for your next instagram reel or photo.
We, as in humanity, are not dying out. While statisticians observe sinking fertility rates globally [1], reproduction is still going strong. In fact, humanity is still growing.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate
2.1 is considered to be replacement level.
The parts of the world that hold this number up don't produce people productive enough to support the social programs elderly people rely on in the west.
Who’s watching TV? “Doodiehead” “Irrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr:7:?@“ “cars 3” or “+ New User”?
Rather, it’s a basic usability issue, with extra clicks/taps/whatever required, or an overly-complex presentation, requiring extra attention. Also, as noted in another comment, every UI element increases the opportunity for misfires.
In The Days of Yore, we used to “score” our UI, by how many taps/clicks it took, to accomplish tasks, or how long it took, to understand a screen. The lower, the better. I’m a bit of an anachronism, as I still do that.
My experience, is that implementing intuitive, low-interaction UI is really hard. I’m in the middle of designing a screen with drag-and-drop support for a matrix of icons. I’ve been working on it for a couple of days, already, and probably have at least a couple more to go. Lot of work, for just one screen. It’s all about removing unnecessary interactions, and implementing subtle, intuitive affordances. Also, symbolic debugging of UICollectionView is a real bitch. The debugger borks the drag and drop, so I have to use a bunch of print() statements.
I think most software is done by folks that aren’t willing to “go the extra mile,” to design and implement truly intuitive UI.
I don't see how the existence of a children's profile bothers anyone so much. It's not extra work. You don't have to scroll past it or anything. It's just a nonoffensive thing that sits there if you ever need it on the initial profile page.
But also it's just annoying. In some apps it's remembering what the heck you set the password to.
Dead Comment
Stockholm syndrome in full force.
Why doesn't it log in to the last used profile automatically?
At the same time, the existing one is fine for people (like me) who only use one -- as GP says, on a TV it's just a double confirm, if designed well. That said, for accounts that only have a single profile, I'm not sure why you'd show the select in the first place. Hide it by default, show it when the user creates a sub profile. DOS didn't have a login prompt.
It’s a horrible, horrible UX and is a perfect example of PM’s going wild and not being pushed back on by other disciplines. It’s such a shame.
Get a $50 raspberry pi, NUC, or Android box.
> Get a <...> Android box.
Why are you ok for Google to spy on you but not LG?
There's absolutely 0 guarantee that a no name android box isn't doing the same, if not worse than what LG and Samsung are doing.
Another device adds another failure point, possibly another remote (lets be honest, HDMI-CEC is not reliable. It's been almost 20 years and device support is still spotty and bug ridden on both sides), extra complexity, extra space. You might want that choice and freedom, and that's absolutely fine, but I'd rather not thanks.
https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2023/01/preinstalled-...
Feature creep and scope creep are real, but if you want to add a feature for a kids profile then put «disable kids profile» as part of the scope for that task.
As someone with kids I find it really useful to have kids profiles. Netflix one is particularly good, I can configure a general age group and block individual shows.
Our national TV app comes in two flavours, a general app and a specific one for kids. Makes it easier to deploy features for kids without adding any nagging popups for adults.