Why I strive to reduce “User Engagement”
When I refer to User Engagement, I am roughly speaking of any metric that measures time spent on my site. This metric, of all metrics that a business application might want to improve, sometimes feels both useless and selfish.
A designer’s job is to increase happiness
My job is to make it easy for folks to do whatever they need to get done unencumbered by the software tools they have to use to do it. I can’t make the “thinking” part of their jobs any faster, but I can make the production aspect of it, the clicking on stuff to execute their thought process — the boring, administrative, paperworky part of their work— I can make that really easy and quick. In fact, the more time they spend on our site, the more likely it is that they are not seeing what they want.
My job is to ensure that our customers have time to do the important stuff — stuff that might not look like it makes us money, but stuff that will make them appreciate us.
I want them to spend less time on our application, and more time growing their business, hugging their families, and breathing in forests.
“Engagement” goals might be a reflection of our culture of self-obsession
I find that many business folks — product managers, marketers, executives — want users to spend more time using their products. Unless you rely on advertising for your dollars, the amount of time users spend on your site is not directly correlated to how much money you make.
You really want them to spend the least amount time on your application that still fulfills an essential need. The business I am a part of makes money only when our customers go off and work on new projects, when they create new work, when they have new ideas. We don’t make money when they are spending time navigating our site.
Let’s not be too clingy
Most things we design is a tool — to be used when needed. This tool is very important in our lives — we designed it — but is certainly not the most important thing in our customer’s lives. They might actually love us more if we are not clingy, if we let them fly free. Let’s not be so needy, let’s just be useful — and they will come back to us when they need us.
In a world where the time we spend online is invisible to us — I strive to reduce user engagement, and hope that time less wasted online adds up to meaningful experiences in the real world.
