The Metric That Ruins Everything

Software teams track everything now. Time spent on page. Click-through rates. Conversion funnels. Engagement scores. Heat maps showing where eyes linger. Every interaction becomes data, every behaviour a metric to optimize.

Then someone decides which metric matters most. That’s when things break.

Consider a news app optimizing for “time spent reading.” Sounds reasonable. More time reading means more engaged readers, right? So designers add infinite scrolling. Autoplay videos. Related article suggestions that never end. Clickbait headlines engineered to keep you scrolling.

The metric improves. Time spent skyrockets. But nobody’s actually reading anymore. They’re scrolling, skimming, chasing the next headline. The proxy measure (time spent) became disconnected from the actual goal (informed readers).

This pattern repeats across products. A shopping app focuses on conversion rates, so it adds aggressive pop-ups and manipulative countdown timers. Conversions increase. Customer satisfaction craters. The metric wins. The experience loses.

Social platforms optimize for engagement, which sounds innocuous until you realize engagement means any interaction. Rage-clicking counts. Hate-sharing counts. Doomscrolling at 2 AM counts. The algorithm doesn’t distinguish between “engaged because delighted” and “engaged because enraged.” It just wants you clicking.