persuasive technology : time as utility

Should ‘time spent’ be a metric that marketers try to improve or should it be ‘time saved’ ? In most instances brands/ platforms are trying to persuade people to spend more time with them in exchange for entertainment-social acceptance-information etc.. This used to make sense as more time spent meant more engaged consumers and a higher propensity to buy.
 
In an age where time is becoming more precious than oil its an opportunity for brands/ platforms to work towards ‘time saved’ as a metric and reap the rewards of consumer delight.
 
Tristan Harris (TimeWellSpent.io) talks about how technology platforms / digital marketing is exploiting our weaknesses and creating addicts of all of us – how the illusion of choice and fear of missing out compels us to go deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole towards a promised wonderland, forever digging and never reaching.
 
How should brands think about designing for ‘time saved’ as a metric and benefit from this decision economically ?
 

1. Design for Consumer Utility: instead of a blind rush to design for more time spent its far more intelligent to understand the consumer context with respect to overall needs/ pain points and current barriers. Example : Consumers looking for financial solutions need help in navigating through complex information / comparisons as they spend more time but end up confused and directionless. Given their unfamliarity with technical terminology, utility for them at the first stage becomes ‘identifying their goal’ in language that they are familiar with. Creating a funneled, phased process of discovery that shows them options based on pre-selected parameters and providing a ‘completion rate’ indicator signals progress in the process.  The metric of time saved for a consumer moving from information to enquiry will help design the process for simplicity while resulting in higher rates of enquiries. Win-win.
2. Design for Friction-free: Unnecessary information and steps adds no utility for the consumer and will likely lead to drop-offs. A customer looking for a test-drive of a car needs to given a simple appointment option (time, dealer) and share information on how best they can contacted. No more. Goal completion is the test drive completed, not time spent.   
3. Memory: A complex purchase decision may take days if not weeks where the consumers are spending time offline/ comparing different products etc before they make a final choice. Re-starting the process the next time they visit can be a huge barrier to goal completion. If the brand can help consumers start where they last left off (abandoned cart concept) it will help consumers save time in remaking the choices and likely encourage goal completion at a faster rate.

 
The exception to the above examples of reducing time spent are ‘entertainment platforms’ like Netflix, Youtube etc.. Where people have a choice, spending more time will give more utility (even if its watching cat videos!) and the goals are to maximise consumer utility and delight.

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