For years, service creators have been obsessed with keeping users engaged in their platforms. Think Facebook or YouTube—they want you to say as long as possible on their platforms (1). But when we focus on keeping people engaged for as long as possible, we're basically designing for addiction. As service creators we used nudges, gamification to ensure people not use our services but really love them deeply. Sometimes too deeply.

Now with distance, it's clear: entire generations feel addicted to digital services.

Instead of just checking if people are using our service or engaged, let's look at how meaningful or impactful their time is. Just because someone spends a lot of time on our platform doesn't mean they're getting joy out of it or a solving their personal challenges with it.

Action question

Which part of your service might have the highest risk of being like heroin for the people you serve? What metrics do you use might lead you to design for addiction without you even realizing it?

Footnotes

(1) Because the longer you stay, the more you see ads, and the more you see ads, the more money the companies make.

Daniele's notes

• This is the first shitty draft of this principle

• This principle might one day make it in the fifth book in the "Service Design Principles" series that explores how to better serve humans and the planet.

• If you're curious about service design principles, you can get the four previous books in the series, with proofread principles and less grammatical creativity.

Written with AI help
This principle draft is based on an audio note I took while walking that was transcribed and cleaned using Audiopen. I then reviewed and improved the text by hand.