### Santiago Rodriguez: The end of the screen time KPI in AI applications For the last 15 years, screen time has been the best indicator of value delivery in both consumer and business applications. We’ve been living in a paradigm focused on hours of Netflix streaming, mouse clicks in a healthcare EHR UX (to demonstrate meaningful use), or even time spent on chatGPT as the key performance indicator. As we move to a future based on <u>outcome-based pricing</u> that perfectly aligns incentives between vendors and users, we’ll first move away from screen time reporting. We’re already seeing this in practice. When I run DeepResearch queries on ChatGPT, I capture an enormous amount of value despite almost no screen time. When Abridge magically captures the patient-provider conversation and automates downstream activities, the doctor barely looks at the screen. When Cursor develops entire applications end-to-end, the engineer is planning the next feature development cycle. And when Hebbia drafts a pitch deck from hundreds of public filings, the investment banker is getting well deserved sleep. This presents a unique challenge: how much an application can charge per user requires a more complex method of measuring ROI. Doctor satisfaction, developer productivity, financial analyst wellbeing and consumer happiness all increase with AI applications. The companies that tell the simplest sales pitch on ROI will continue to outpace their competitors. --- ## Deeper Implications ### For Product Design Products must be designed for **minimal necessary interaction**. The UI becomes a control panel, not a workspace. The goal is to ==set intentions== and ==review outputs==, not to _do_ the work. [[From UX to AX]] -- UI is for humans, not for agents. ### For Competition The competitive moat shifts from "stickiness" (lock-in through habit) to **irreplaceability** (lock-in through results). If an AI tool genuinely 10x's productivity, switching costs are measured in lost outcomes, not lost familiarity. ### For Society If we succeed in moving from attention to outcomes, we might finally break the addiction-by-design pattern of the last 15 years. Software could become a tool that _liberates_ time rather than _consumes_ it.