Willi Kampmann
Sep 8, 2018 · 1 min read

There’s a big part of the puzzle I think you left out: the business model. Facebook, for example, is essentially an ad network. The longer you stay on FB, the more money they make. That’s why they focus on user attention. With CouchSurfer (as described in your article), there’s a fee per successful transaction, so they aren’t financially dependent on you wasting any more time. Subscription models like Netflix use attention as an easy hook to convince you to stay subscribed, but I’m pretty sure the better ones of them — Netflix, certainly — are so valuable already to most customers, that they could do without and just focus on quality. I don’t know the business app you’re working on, but I expect it will come with either an up-front fee or a subscription, too.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is, it’s easy for designers to think about value when there’s a functional transactional business model with the end user. But ad-supported services — and microtransaction-based services!!! — exist not just for the fun of it, but because often end users aren’t willing to spend money directly.

I think that’s where the biggest problem lies: how do you combine a value-based design with an advertising or microtransaction business model? Is that even possible, and if not, what’s the alternative? Sure, FB is talking about “time well spent” these days, but that reminds me of that April Fools joke I once read that claimed McDonald’s wanted to change its corporate identity color from yellow to green to appear healthier.

    Willi Kampmann

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