Disrespectful Design – Users aren’t stupid or lazy
After reading this design critique, I looked up the author&#x27;s bio and I&#x27;m unsurprised to see he&#x27;s not a designer, but a long-time developer&#x2F;dev manager. As a mid-career developer and art school trained designer, I encounter a lot of exclusively technical people who think they completely understand the product design process because technical pursuits themselves involve some amount of design, and they help implement the decisions and plans made by the design team. Sometimes I encounter well-reasoned external input that helps break down echo chambers and challenge group think; I don&#x27;t think this article falls into that category.<p>Within the single example given— infinite scroll traps, specifically citing Facebook— the author did not present any real evidence that those designs were even partially driven by contempt for users&#x27; intelligence. It&#x27;s a pretty controversial assertion that he treated as self-evident. Also, the author citing Facebook as a prime example of low-agency infinite scroll traps when services like TikTok and Instagram are far better examples hints he might not be very familiar with the current design landscape which he is critiquing.<p>Lots of people— mostly designers— have presented very valid critiques of infinite scroll. Generally, the goal of infinite scroll is to reduce the cognitive barriers to staying engaged with a product by having content just appear as soon as users look for it. It&#x27;s incredibly effective. Too effective. Removing these natural pause points removes one of the ways users subconsciously gauge how much time they&#x27;ve spent on an activity, and removes the places that users tend to insert natural stopping points. For example, when reading a book, flipping pages and passing chapters both gives us a general sense of how long we&#x27;ve spent reading without having to manually track it, and gives us a nice place to hit the pause button and put the book down. I agree that infinite scroll <i>is</i> disrespectful to the user and poor design because it favors business needs over many users&#x27; need to not get sucked into scrolling through TikTok for a few hours without even realizing it.<p>Overall, this article seems to argue against a design perspective I&#x27;ve never once seen a designer present. (Support? Maybe.) I&#x27;ve not once seen anybody justify infinite scroll by saying users are too dumb to use something more complicated. Either this guy has worked for some companies with seriously bad design departments, or he&#x27;s a bit overconfident in his layman&#x27;s interpretation of designers&#x27; perspective and intent.