Can’t Put Down Your Device? That’s by Design

By NATASHA SINGER

DEC. 5, 2015

Greg Hochmuth was one of the first software engineers hired at Instagram. He worked on a team in 2012 that developed the first Android app for the slick photo-sharing service. In its first 24 hours, the app was downloaded more than one million times.

But Mr. Hochmuth eventually came to realize that the platform’s pleasing features — the interface that made it easy for people to upload and share beautiful images, the personalized suggestions of accounts to follow — also had potential downsides.

The same design qualities that make an app enthralling, he said, may also make it difficult for people to put down. And the more popular such services become, the more appeal they hold for users — a phenomenon known as the network effect.

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