My Experience Has Nuance, Yours Is a Data Point
This piece explores the limitations of binary feedback mechanisms like 'thumbs up' buttons in capturing the nuance of human experience. It argues that reducing complex user interactions to simple data points leads to flawed decision-making in professional contexts.
Why it matters
It critiques the over-reliance on quantitative data in tech product design, advocating for a more human-centric approach to user feedback.
Eric Bailey has a fun little post about how we need more than a few icons to express the nuance of our shared human experience.
For example, he suggests Netflix provide some feedback buttons to indicate the kinds of experiences we all share consuming and rating media:
What’s great about the examples in Eric’s post is how familiar they are. We can read them and laugh because we’ve had the same thought — “I’m pressing ‘thumbs up’ here, but what I really mean is…”
We know when we click that button that it’s a reductive expression of our experience that’ll be erroneously interpreted, but we do it anyway. As Bryan Cantrill shared from his experience:
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