My imaginary children aren't using your streaming service
shkspr.mobi
shkspr.mobi
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.
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.
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.
It’s much more simple: if a “permanently off” setting is worse for metrics, it won’t get built that way.
> 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 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.
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.
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.
The kids should not have jobs of caring old generation lined up even before birth. My child is not going to born to take care for these olds.
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.
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.
Grief isn't linear.
They're just sitting down for a relaxing movie or series and the first thing that comes up is the question: "You don't have kids right?"
They have an algorithm which can account for every micro-taste on the planet. What's the point of having computers if they can't properly account for the real world?
Because phenomenal experience of children exists unavoidably outside of Netflix
> They have an algorithm which can account for every micro-taste on the planet
Citation needed
When your entire content is full of triggers for those who lost a child, what's one more trigger at the loading screen?
They just need to add an option to hide the "kids" profile, which, as is being noted all over this comment thread, would be useful for a number of reasons.
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.
Indeed :)
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.
My previous TV only had one CEC port, which was also the ARC port. I had a receiver that conencted via HDMI meaning that CEC was only usable on that device, and not on any other things that were connected to it.
> 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.
Most adults I know could take it or leave netflix and think about cancelling it now and then.
I reckon the dirty secret of netflix is that the two primary use cases are actually sleep aid and child minding service.
Totally agree, let us turn it off, full stop.
That's how I read it at least
The last two paragraphs talk about "harried parents", and "world doesn't revolve around children." sounds like having kids is a burden and resentful of the impact of people having kids on his life.
Its quite a lengthy rant about a minor UI inconvenience.
There is also a problem with the "never ask again" option. How long is never? Someone who does not have children now might well in a few years time.
It's quite a lengthy rant about prioritizing everytime inconvenience over a setting switch that could be enabled once, after a few years time.
World doesn't revolve about your children (or mine. And yes, I have them and yes, this is one of these mildly infuriating UX decisions).
Putting it into a programming context. Imagine you're a C++ developer. Wouldn't it be annoying if your text editor asked you every time you opened a project if you actually wanted to use Python instead.
Checks out I guess.
Or, yeah, because if my child can access streaming without a child lock, they may not recover from what they see.
Looks like we should protect each other as much as we can, using UI!
The push toward {fog,edge}-computing, new distributed LLM proposals like BrianknowsAI's DCI Network clearly show this trend. We need moldable systems not cages.
Some people also do the reverse and set up parental control profile on their own devices to get easier management and more granularity than the bog standard ones like screentime etc.
If anything, I wished it was more embraced.
Maybe first let them use fully open sourced computer so they know what is going on. Being on smart phone is like being a 2nd class citizen of computer. Let them use self-hosted app before using apps on smart phone alternatives. So they know what they are getting them selves into on the smart phone. Beside the with EFM harzard of these smart devices, it would be good to have kids focus more on real things when they are out about.
- adults also use these type of control on themselves (this very site has a setting for people who just don't want to stop by themselves)
- adults use these on other adults as well, and not just for security purposes
- falling back to a binary all or nothing seldom helps when it comes to education. I like your point on open source computers, but getting to learn a proper distance with a smartphone is also important and should be part of any kid's education IMHO, the same way they learn to cross the street or use electrical appliances. We don't tell them it's too complicated and put them in a cage until they're 18.
This is of course more expensive, since you have to buy a large storage drive, a disc reader and discs. But you have more control and rights with physical media than streaming; in practice no one can take your bits away.
If you are less scrupulous there are of course, other sources.
I lost my mother when I was very young, and I remember being in middle school and being told by a well-meaning teacher that institutions should be more considerate of people like me and stop observing mother's day because it's triggering or something, or brings back memories. This stuck with me because while I appreciated that they were trying to be considerate, it was a ridiculous, ill-conceived suggestion. I never forgot that I lost my mother, and pretending that everyone else also didn't have mothers wasn't helpful. It was actually harmful.
Netflix is often something that people share with family in social settings. Even people who don't have children, who lost children, or who hate children like this weird guy, have family situations that sometimes involve children and they want to pull up a children profile. Maybe there should be a setting this guy can set to hide this because it's so triggering to his anger, but what a lame thing to whine about.
If anything, I tend to witness more and more "anti-child" behaviours: hotels without children, restaurants without children, weddings without children. I don't have children and feel rather uncomfortable around them, but this trend just makes me sad.
Do you have zero pet peeves? Never annoyed by anything short of the lack of world peace? Never written a comment suggesting something is annoying? Or is this just typical internet snark, desperately trying to pass for clever insight?
The dude wrote a short blog post about something that annoys him and it’s fucking weird when people like you try to make that something bigger than it is.
Speaking of sad.
Maybe you're own mental health would improve (since this is repeatedly referenced as the reason for viewing nonsense media), along with that of your imaginary children?
Has anyone else noticed how every streaming service has an "Audio Description" mode?
My imaginary deaf people aren't using your streaming service! I don't want to be reminded of deafness!
rutracker.org
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
You'll have a UX that's nicer than most commercial services, you'll have all the content you've ever wanted and you won't be feeding predatory capitalist services with your hard-earned cash.
I mean, it kind of does. There is no (human) world without kids.
Every adult who can’t stand children was once a child and will be cared for by the annoying children of today when they’re old and infirm. Not by their own kids, of course, because they don’t have any, but by other people’s kids. So, you’re welcome, I guess. Sorry you had to see things for kids.
No need to set up a special account, it’s already there.
By the same logic you may have Greek friends visiting some time, so for that reason the welcome screen should always provide an option to switch to Greek content. No need to set up a special account, it’s already there.
As a general rule, don't let other people's kids near your TV's controls. Your friends will appreciate it, and if they don't, a kids account on Netflix won't help.
It’s unlikely the kids would choose the correct profile in the first place.
Perhaps the kids mode needs to be easily accessible and prominent, because it might need to be used by kids? Maybe it’s good design to have it available on the very first screen.
It’s also distasteful to borrow trauma from others to justify personal preferences. Don’t speak for people who have experienced extreme tragedy as a way of reinforcing an argument. It’s weird.
“Thomas” -> ??? Who came up with this idea? This is an awful idea. It doesn’t make any sense.
We can empathize with people, but ultimately, we don’t have to agree with their complaints. If you have 300 million customers, there’s no one set of UI choices that annoys nobody. The current UI seems to annoy a very small number of people and, in turn, benefits a very large number of people. Needs of the many, and whatnot. I could equally be annoyed by wheelchair ramps. They’re an annoyance to me, but I recognize that they’re very useful to others.
As my kids are growing up, the kids mode makes less and less sense. We would like to watch family friendly movies but not stuff for very small children.
Using your own profile for this makes the recommendations become out of whack quickly.
Do you find all personalization configuration “strange to the point of novelty”?
Your second paragraph is irrelevant - all of those things could be true, but have absolutely nothing to do with it being a perpetual, unremovable item on the screen. I think this was clearly addressed in the article, so it seems odd to try to relitigate it while adding absolutely nothing to the discussion.