Discover more from User Experiences that Matter

I write a newsletter every two-four weeks. I'll let you decide if it’s any good but people seem to stay on. In fact, thousands of smart people incl. designers from Amazon, IDEO, Figma and Shopify are subscribers.

Over 2,000 subscribers

Engagement is an antimetric

Anton Sten

Feb 14, 2020

As a word, engagement is meaningless. It’s a stand-in for any number of measurements collected by the tracking technology embedded into every website, app, and TV. For Google, engagement might mean the number of times an ad is seen. To Instagram, engagement is probably a complex formula comprising likes, comments, and follows. Netflix could count the number of hours the average person spends watching Friends as engagement.

A meaningless word, but a meaningful measurement; engagement drives algorithms. So engagement is closely monitored. Right now, product managers, designers, and engineers are planning, building, and shipping to drive more engagement. Those measurements feed the formulae that guide what shows we watch, what ads we see, and what products we buy.Engagement is an antimetric

Matthew Ström is quickly rising to become one of my favorite bloggers.