Funny twist: Quartz automatically loading another news story at the end of the article to keep readers hooked.

These types of studies while fascinating oversimplify psychology too much.

We're just seeing the generation with the internet in adolescence grow into adults. A bigger buy button certainly won't be making me purchase, and we're seeing year after year in marketing that things that worked aren't working. People adapt to them, and pretty fast at that.

like the generation of internet marketers and makers before, we don't have magic wands and things change.

The only magic trick is convincing people there are concrete 1:1 correlations that can be made for changes as this article initially hints at for clickbait. There are subtle suggestions that can be made, but most if not all are just there to make the point of being on site simpler.

People scroll for longer because there is content they want to see, making it easier for people to access it isn't some dark art.

Just like making a site that's horrible like macy's easier to purchase from isn't inherently something evil.

If you hang out on Designer News you are not likely to learn much in this article (UX's focus on engagement takes advantage of user's unconscious proclivities even if it doesn't benefit them).

While partially true, it is disheartening to know that, to many readers, their introduction to UX and digital product design will be so grim.

To paraphrase ad man Jacques Seguela:

Please don’t tell my mother I work in User eXperience, she believes I play the piano in a brothel.

hmmm.... not sure how i feel about this.

It's our jobs as designers to make products that work: that are easier to use, make certain tasks more efficient, make an experience more enjoyable etc. It seems like a logical fallacy to place full blame on designers, when it really comes down to characteristic flaws of certain user demographics ("omg i just need a break from social media...im on it all the time").

That's like placing blame on couch manufacturers for the obesity epidemic. "Well, they made the couches TOO comfortable, and now everyone just sits on the couch watching tv. It's really the couch creator's fault that I'm out of shape...they just made these couches too well."

¯_(ツ)_/¯