Monday Moans, where I take out my frustrations on you instead of my wife. She doesn’t listen to my complaints anyway.<\/p>\n<\/div>You click on a product because it looks interesting. Maybe it promises to help you learn something, become more productive, write better, organize your life, or use AI better. If you need a 20-question quiz you’ve already lost me\u2014lengthy quizzes can discourage users right from the start.<\/p>\n
So far, so good.<\/p>\n
Then, instead of telling you what the product actually does, it asks you to take an assessment<\/strong>.<\/p>\n And not a little one.<\/p>\n You are presented with a series of questions about your goals, habits, ambitions, frustrations, personality, working style and where you supposedly want to be in five years.<\/p>\n What matters most to you right now?<\/em><\/p>\n What is your biggest challenge?<\/em><\/p>\n How would you describe your current situation?<\/em><\/p>\n What would you like to achieve?<\/em><\/p>\n And then there are usually several more screens of the same sort.<\/p>\n At some point I start wondering whether I came to buy something or accidentally applied for a job.<\/p>\n I used to play along and answer the questions because I was genuinely interested in the product. I assumed the assessment was there for a good reason. Perhaps it would produce a genuinely useful recommendation or tailor the product to my needs.<\/p>\n But I’ve gradually become rather skeptical.<\/p>\n If I am interested in a product, tell me what the product does<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Give me the features. Show me examples. Let me see the price. Tell me who it is intended for and what problem it solves.<\/p>\n Then let me<\/em> decide whether it is useful.<\/p>\n I don’t particularly want to spend ten minutes answering questions before being allowed to discover that the product costs \u20ac79.99 a year.<\/p>\n And I certainly don’t want to be told that I have now been “analysed” and that the computer has discovered my ideal path to success.<\/p>\n It hasn’t.<\/p>\n It has discovered which boxes I ticked.<\/p>\n I have nothing against personalization.<\/p>\n If a service can genuinely use information about me to make the product more useful, that’s perfectly reasonable.<\/p>\n What annoys me is when the assessment feels less like a useful diagnostic tool and more like a sales funnel wearing a lab coat<\/strong>.<\/p>\n The questions give the impression that something sophisticated is happening behind the scenes. Perhaps an algorithm is analyzing my answers and constructing a carefully tailored experience just for me.<\/p>\n Maybe it is.<\/p>\n But sometimes I suspect the actual process is closer to:<\/p>\nI have stopped taking the tests<\/h3>\n
The problem isn’t personalization<\/h3>\n
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