“The conversion rate on that landing page is diving, do you have any way to help us figure out why?” We’ve probably all been in this situation. All hands on deck for a short-term emergency in a business. Now imagine that the reason that dive is taking place is because a particular model or recommender was optimizing for something not well understood by your partners. On top of that, imagine that the person who built that data product has moved on to a different company.
Love this sentiment, and I've got some "down with black boxes" content of my own I'm working through. But as I was revisiting this concept a second time, I had this thought -- "I don't understand the internals of half the systems I work with -- so sometimes black boxes must be okay, right?"
If a product is reliable, unsurprising, and useful -- is a black box okay for end users? For example, I don't understand deeply how my database system works, but I rely heavily on it. (Although I also trust that adequate documentation and SLAs are in place.)
Do you have any thoughts on when it's okay for the customer to not understand what is happening in the system?
Love this sentiment, and I've got some "down with black boxes" content of my own I'm working through. But as I was revisiting this concept a second time, I had this thought -- "I don't understand the internals of half the systems I work with -- so sometimes black boxes must be okay, right?"
If a product is reliable, unsurprising, and useful -- is a black box okay for end users? For example, I don't understand deeply how my database system works, but I rely heavily on it. (Although I also trust that adequate documentation and SLAs are in place.)
Do you have any thoughts on when it's okay for the customer to not understand what is happening in the system?