> designed to increase user happiness and wellbeing?
I have complicated feelings about the roles of business in our lives. I'm not entirely certain that's a metric I'm concerned with them optimizing on, nor do I believe we can even remotely quantifiably capture it in any meaningful with with human-computer interactions.
Complicated feelings are warranted. But is it better for massive companies to ignore human wellbeing?
We know that algorithmically optimized digital services can negatively effect wellbeing. We also know that management responds to metrics. I'm proposing that wellbeing metrics (namely, the self-reported effects of services on aspects of wellbeing) should be periodically gathered through surveys. Surely this takes effort, but if we only optimize what is easy to measure (time spent), this will continue to produce negative unintended consequences.
How do we even begin to define wellbeing? How do you measure it, and do so at scale with statistical confidence? How do you finance it? How do you moderate and govern it? Who does it benefit besides the industries that spring up to support it? I don't think "wellbeing" is concrete enough an idea like business metrics to meaningful act upon in private organizations. Sort of a "road to hell paved in good intentions" concern.
Here's how the OECD does it at a country-level. A couple decades ago this probably seemed too hard. Then, it turns out it's not that hard to operationalize wellbeing and measure it at scale with statistical confidence. It isn't perfect — the science advances — and that's good.
Companies already invest heavily in the assessment and optimization of employee wellbeing. This is a major industry in HR now, especially during covid. Is it really such a far stretch that a Facebook or Netflix should regularly gather metrics from a subset of customers to understand how their products affect user wellbeing?
After reading up on it, there's nothing about this that builds confidence that it's anything more an indicator of wellbeing than the "MyPlate" USDA guidelines are for dietary requirements.
And this is evidence somehow, other than being another research paper in a sea of many? I'm sure there's none of those at the FDA. I mean, the abstract ends with:
"Results suggest that there is considerable disagreement regarding how to properly understand and measure well-being."
The existence of research does not make something definitive, but I'm always happy to be proven wrong.
Even basic physical phenomena aren't definitive. That's not how science works. We shouldn't expect a singular metric of wellbeing to rely on for all time. Existing wellbeing measures and models are useful enough to inform practical decision-making and design. What we admittedly lack are measures sensitive enough to indicate when small design improvements are successful. More research needed.
> businesses are built to generate profit at the customers' expense.
Absolutely agree, which is why I'm bearish on the roles of companies. Companies are made up of people, and significant change comes slowly to people over very long periods of time. Look how long things woman's suffrage, unemployment benefits, and civil rights took. The U.S. is still fighting over single-payer healthcare while 66% of all bankruptcies are tied to medical bills, and we can't even agree on whether the Covid vaccine is a good thing.
I don't think I want random groups of people joined in coordinated capitalism to increase their profits at my expense, while constantly moving between those groups, also being responsible for my wellbeing. I want them to sell me their shit so I can get back to figuring out the rest of this mess.
The point is that they will support user wellbeing if it makes them more money. If half of society is saying "don't use Facebook, it's bad for you" that's not ideal from a business perspective. It's why McDonald's offers salad.
I have complicated feelings about the roles of business in our lives. I'm not entirely certain that's a metric I'm concerned with them optimizing on, nor do I believe we can even remotely quantifiably capture it in any meaningful with with human-computer interactions.