Algorithms? Amazing or Abysmal?
How much do Algorithms really help people make decisions?
If you’ve interacted with the internet at all recently, chances are you’ve probably encountered an Algorithm, whether it’s working away in the background or actively trying to push content to your attention?
But until recently, I never really thought too much about algorithms. A large majority of people have gotten used to the way content is presented to them on the web, whether it’s Facebook’s algorithm deciding what news feed articles it’s users see, or how Twitter organises the tweets you see.
Users have constantly complained about not being able to see their content in the chronological order that they want, on the majority of social platforms.
The issue I have is, algorithms are presented as a smart and helpful way to help users on the web. But why do so many of them do such a terrible job of helping users?
I’ve been using LinkedIn for 8 years now, updating my working history, making connections with friends and colleagues, following interests and people based on my career. LinkedIn has a lot of data about me. But it is absolutely rubbish at making recommendations based on the information it has about me. I should clarify, the LinkedIn algorithm is bad at this.
I’ve been transitioning in my career as Front End Developer to a UI Designer over the last year. I’ve been following UX groups and people, interacting with people in that feed, adding UI and UX projects to my profile, updating with information about the UI Course I completed at Flatiron. On top of that, I have actively told it I am looking for UI/UX positions for my next job. And I have been applying for those types of roles over the last 5 months. And yet, the algorithm is still terrible!
As you can see, the email confirming the role I applied for, also has recommendations for other “similar jobs” I might be interested in. But they are not other UI/UX Designer roles, or even Design roles in general. It’s frustrating, because as I’m actively searching for a job, this could in theory be really useful, but in execution it’s poor and annoying.
And this is where the execution of the algorithms result falls apart. It’s frustrating moments like these that make the entire experience feel frustrating and half baked. There’s something to be said about the human factor that algorithms lack. Humans understand context, personal experiences, and algorithms can’t understand those nuances, even with all of the data points they have access to.
