People only want their technology to do three things
technology · 6 comments · 200 words · Viewed ~398 times.
Many years ago, I worked as a product manager for pre-smart phones. Remember that old Nokia phone you had? Yeah, them!
This was a common complaint we heard back then: "Ugh! Why do phones have all these useless, overcomplicated, random functions? People only want their phones to do three thing - calls, texts, and..."
And...
And that's where the problem was. That third thing was different for everyone. For some it was a calendar, for others a calculator. Some couldn't live without Snake, and others could cope without a MIDI style ringtone.
I see the same today in technology. Take something like Markdown. People only want a text formatting syntax to do three things. Bold text, links, and...
- Bullets
- Headings
- Tables
- Footnotes
At which point, you've basically reinvented HTML but with worse different syntax.
Messaging apps suffer the same problems. People only want to send texts, images, and...
- Reaction gifs
- Group chats
- Typing indicators
- Payment requests
This isn't a plea to reduce features. But, rather, it is a plea to users to have empathy for people who aren't like them. If you don't see the utility in a feature, that's probably because the feature isn't for you!
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