Maybe we could Design and develop for exploration/discovery instead of for engagement
A thought I’ve been having recently is that we don’t get to explore the web anymore… not really
I like to think that people have an intrinsic search for the new and unknown especially when it’s made so easy and available in this online setting where we can give a user all this control and a horizon that extends nearly infinitely. So cool!
I think I can best explain with a small observation (and interpretation) that social media platforms (especially) have removed many hints of how large they actually are, only allowing users to see a tiny bit of an entire platform through the stuff a user interacts with.
We are often times given a page which acts like an explore page while actually it’s a second feed, giving us more of the same content we have clicked on in the past. In the process, hiding views and content that don’t align with users’ monitored interests and users are left with content that reinforces what they already believe and or know. There is no true exploration on social platforms (and other large websites) anymore because now apps seek to engage users instead of having them explore and get lost (which sometimes is a good thing!). We don’t get to get lost on the web, instead the trend is to make it fit in weird boxes that don’t help users explore and discover anymore, they serve users more of what they already have, keeping us within a box of interests, views and opinions where we see what we want to and everything else is never shown.
The nature of the engagement that large social media platforms facilitate might mean users spend more time and thought on these platforms. This does not mean that they are more fulfilled than before or that the experiences on such platforms are meaningful to them.
This has caused developers to be pushed to build tools specifically designed for engagement (like-buttons and emoji responses) instead of building tools that help users actually explore. This has replaced a lot of room for play with a struggle for users’ attention and I think that’s a bit of a shame.
In an ideal scenario, these recommendations, besides being accurate, should also be new. But hardly any platforms provide both new and accurately curated recommendations. Algorithms made to recommend content disregard completely new items which is a big shame. I think that if more developers could start thinking and speaking about this we could make a serious case where it stops being a fantasy and unrealistic and starts being a real option for the web today. So we can start building tools that help users actually explore. I understand the need for an explicit search and I’m not lobbying that we should replace those, what I’m talking about is an addition to the web in order to help us explore more!
It’s fairly easy to create a “random posts” section on a website. Doing so allows users to explore the site as a physical archive or library, letting them browse content far from their comfort zone and view posts whose subjects don’t necessarily match their interests, actually find something new and can truly show your users how large your site/platform really is and how different the content on it is. Such a feature could replace the need for a search, making the page be about the experience of exploring these posts without any sort of curation or personalisation instead of searching for a particular thing you know exists.
I got inspired by this website, it lets you “take a walk through the internet” and explore and find new stuff! very cool.
Sources:
https://mindsea.com/app-engagement-and-retention/
https://elliott.computer/pages/exploring-the-vastness-of-a-website.html
https://content.iospress.com/articles/intelligenza-artificiale/ia190017
