Why can’t they just fix bad tech? (hint: the product owner isn't who you think)

Those ads that push the article I’m reading out of view… the popup that I accidentally click on when it suddenly appears while I’m scrolling… that app that keeps sending me notifications that I can’t figure out how to turn off… Why can’t they just fix this? It’s simple UI stuff… maybe a week of refactoring… It’s just so annoying I don’t want to use their app or website!

Only… I do keep using the app. It’s annoying, but just barely not annoying enough to make me go away. And, they make money from these annoyances. Because I accidentally click on an ad that wasn’t there 1 second ago, they get ad revenue. Because the opt-out is so hard to find, they can keep pushing notifications to me and claim a higher number of subscribers on the quarterly report.

Modern tech has never really been about building the best product, it’s been about building the most profitable product. Making the user experience better doesn’t always mean making more money, and as it turns out, it doesn’t always make complaints go away, because perfection, after all, is very subjective.

I used to think there was a windowless conference room somewhere that people came up with these nefarious ideas.

“If we just pop the ad up after 5 seconds people will accidentally click or tap it and our revenue will go up by 30%.”

“Brilliant! Get the team on it immediately!”

Only… it doesn’t really work that way. There is definitely a meeting and some tasks around adding more ads in different ways, and I’m sure there are reports that show how ad revenue is performing, but that direct connection between “if we do this annoying thing we’ll make a mint!” implies more forethought and strategy than most companies really have.

Instead, product teams spend keep trying to figure out how to push more revenue generating features and then see what happens. They don’t know that the popup is annoying people, and even if they get flooded with complaints, it’s that revenue number they’re supporting, not you as a consumer.

Sure, they end up adding a “feature” that pisses off so many people they start to lose revenue because people stop using the app and then they remove that feature. But this is an exercise in tuning the app to the lowest acceptable frustration level.

Again, they don’t have a big board someplace with LOWEST ACCETABLE USABILITY FEATURES laid out. It’s not planned, it’s not even really managed.

The real product manager is the balance statement. It doesn’t create tasks, it doesn’t say anything directly about the product, it’s just a set of numbers that management reads. Management doesn’t know much about UX/UI, but it does know that the numbers are working.

And it’s those numbers that drive features and fixes, not the consumers or even the people who work for the company that builds the app.