CONCEPT
Extraction-Oriented Design
Raskin's name for the design philosophy that treats <em>user attention, energy, and cognitive capacity as resources to be consumed</em> — contrasted with flourishing-oriented design.
Extraction-oriented design is the design philosophy that optimizes for user time on task, engagement rate, and output volume without regard for the user's capacity to sustain the level of engagement the tool enables. The philosophy produces tools experienced by users as empowering — capabilities expand, output increases, possibilities multiply — while simultaneously consuming the cognitive and attentional resources that make the expanded capability meaningful. Raskin's framework contrasts extraction-oriented design with flourishing-oriented design, which optimizes for the quality of the human experience during and after engagement with the tool. The technology industry builds tools according to the first philosophy and markets them using the language of the second.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The distinction is not philosophical abstraction but engineering practice. An extraction-oriented tool measures success through engagement metrics: daily active users, time on platform, session length, retention. A flourishing-oriented tool measures success through outcomes: whether the user's judgment improved, whether her autonomous capabilities were maintained or eroded, whether her satisfaction with her life in the domains the tool was
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