Wait, the example held up for "Stop ruining it" is a company that sells snake oil audiophile bullshit?
with blue LEDs, an instant demerit on any consumer electronic
Stop Ruining It
31–40 of 170 posts
Re: Stop Ruining It
#32This reminds me of trying to use File Explorer in Windows 11. I wish I could turn all their electron-app "improvements" off, to make it useful again, like it once was.. Case in point: Explorer now has tabs. I don't need tabs, I need a single tab, and a window title bar so I can drag the damn thing around. And.. my single tab, now tries to show the folder name, truncated to a few useless characters, so I now have tabs…
The tabs are fine. Tabs in "cmd" are also good.
The window handles, on the other hand .. this was correct in Windows 3.0 and there's basically no good reason to have changed it. There should be a title bar. Active window should have visibly contrasting title bar. There should be sufficient grab space all round a window to get hold of it.
Bonus points: move your mouse pointer very slowly around a bottom curved corner window handle on Windows 11. Ask yourself: how well does "place I am pointing at" line up with "where the curve is"?
Re: Stop Ruining It
#33Sounds like subsidiarity to me
Re: Stop Ruining It
#34Don't let the brevity of this post dissuade you from its value. I believe Seth is getting at a very good psychological insight. By default, people give a lot of trust and benefit of the doubt. Everyone's account in life starts out a little positive when it comes to trust, welcome, empathy, and believe. But the flip side of that is that people have a very good memory for past transgressions. When someone has extended…
There is a meaningful design axis here, how one views one's role.
In Bordeaux, winemakers consider themselves geniuses manipulating a many variety blend. In Alsace, winemakers view their role as not screwing up God's work.
Re: Stop Ruining It
#35As someone who works in marketing, this is extremely true. Right now, LLMs are causing a lot of one-time cashing in of trust. I've seen this pattern a bunch: 1. Person builds trust on X/LinkedIn or via an insightful blog/newsletter (substitute your channel of choice here) for a few years because they have unique opinions, interesting stories from personal experience, are entertaining/charismatic, or share data/insigh…
X is itself a massive cash-in of trust by the new owner.
But yes, a lot of the tech industry these days resembles people looking at a rainforest and thinking how much value could be derived from clear-cutting it. Massive one-time extraction of value, long term destruction of an ecosystem, resulting in harms distributed all over the world in ways that aren't obviously linked.
Re: Stop Ruining It
#36This reminds me of trying to use File Explorer in Windows 11. I wish I could turn all their electron-app "improvements" off, to make it useful again, like it once was.. Case in point: Explorer now has tabs. I don't need tabs, I need a single tab, and a window title bar so I can drag the damn thing around. And.. my single tab, now tries to show the folder name, truncated to a few useless characters, so I now have tabs…
every day i am more glad i cannot update to 11 because windows 10 seems to be better in every way
Re: Stop Ruining It
#37Wait, the example held up for "Stop ruining it" is a company that sells snake oil audiophile bullshit?
The product descriptions on audiophile equipment are always gold!
"Designed as the foundation of every great music system, our Power Plant AC regenerators embody an uncompromising commitment to excellence. By rebuilding power from the ground up with state-of-the-art engineering and meticulous precision, they deliver the stable, pure energy essential for revealing music in its truest form."
The product image for this "Power Plant" that no doubt costs tens of thousands has what appears to be a poorly Photoshopped "Improvement" factor meter on the front that goes from 1x to 1000x lol.
https://www.psaudio.com/cdn/shop/products/P20-Black-front.pn...
Re: Stop Ruining It
#38> Customer delight isn’t something we add to our projects. It’s what’s left if we don’t ruin it. my anecdotal experience in this is that getting back X (customer delight / curiosity etc) once you’ve ruined it will usually take longer / be more costly than having just not ruined it in the first place. also, at some point you will ruin it. at that point it’s a question of by how much and if you choose to un-ruin it. so…
I go back and forth on this. Maybe it is the right inclination with software development where there is a strong drive to keep pushing more features and trade offs in terms of “technical debt” or footprint can get pretty abstract at scale. But then I think of an operation like the Disney Parks and it really seems like the delight comes from constant, sustained effort. They’ve got people around attending to everything…
All of the things you described ARE "it". They're part of the Disney Parks "product". If they were to remove or change that active effort, that could be considered "ruining it". But continuing to operate in a way they've found delights their customers is exactly what Seth is arguing for, not a violation of it.
Re: Stop Ruining It
#39> Trust isn’t something a brand builds with an ad campaign. It’s what’s left if the marketers don’t ruin it. So much this. Are ads still a measurably good investment for businesses? I'm assuming they wouldn't run them anymore if not, but they feel so out of touch these days that it's really hard to imagine them really working on anybody. Sorry for the side-tangent, just felt like that last bit of the post really drov…
> Are ads still a measurably good investment for businesses?
Attempting to measure the effectiveness of ads is basically what drove the creation of the surveillance capitalism monster we all know and love today.
Re: Stop Ruining It
#40In a similar vein, I've argued in many a corporate meeting that there's no such thing as "empowerment".
People start out wanting to achieve things, change things to be better, do a good job.
The active issue is disempowerment, created by other people (usually but not always senior) within the organisation.
So the question isn't "how to empower people", but rather "how to prevent disempowerment of people".
This isn't always popular, as it shifts the focus and responsibility for different behaviour away from the disempowered rank and file, towards the dysfunctional leadership.