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Want a killer product? Become more opinionated

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Re: Want a killer product? Become more opinionated

#31

Post by bobthechef »

amelius wrote: post #10

Instead of "opinionated", perhaps this word is a better fit: Paternalistic (adjective) (of people in authority) making decisions for other people rather than letting them take responsibility for their own lives Source: Cambridge Dictionary

I don't really understand the objection. The article is only meaningful as a response to those who try to make a product that is everything to everyone, thus producing a product for nobody. Besides, unless you only buy bespoke, made-to-order products design in consultation with you, anything with a design has already been decided potentially in a way that you dislike but others don't.

Re: Want a killer product? Become more opinionated

#32

Post by some1else »

Regarding the "paste without formatting by default" opinion:

- Pasting a body of text with multiple headlines between two documents would require using a special paste command that explicitly preserves formatting.

- Some benefits of "convention over configuration" are only present if you stick to your existing conventions. Millions of people are already used to explicitly pasting without formatting.

Other remarks:

- Opinions need to be informed by facts and customer-facing research.

- There is room for divergent (Yes AND) thinking, as well as convergent (Just say no) thinking in product design. See "Double Diamond"[1].

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Diamond_(design_process...

Re: Want a killer product? Become more opinionated

#33

Post by corty »

anoncake wrote: post #30
RyEgswuCsn wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> rather than letting them take responsibility for their own lives It would seem to me people sometimes don't want to bother figuring out what's the best way of doing X, therefore I feel it is still valuable for someone to do the research and productize his know-how on "the best way of doing X".

There's nothing wrong with having good defaults, just with not being able to override them. "Opinionated" usually means latter.

Not just usually, opinionated means exactly paternalistic: "opinionated" is the opposite of "configureable". That is a basic tenet of the article.

Re: Want a killer product? Become more opinionated

#34

Post by hexa22 »

some1else wrote: post #32

Regarding the "paste without formatting by default" opinion: - Pasting a body of text with multiple headlines between two documents would require using a special paste command that explicitly preserves formatting. - Some benefits of "convention over configuration" are only present if you stick to your existing conventions. Millions of people are already used to explicitly pasting without formatting. Other remarks: -…

There are certainly two use cases here. One is pasting complex blocks where you want the whole thing to copy over. And the other is copying text out of an email or website where you want it treated as dumb text.

Word actually offers a solution with the “paste without formatting” but it’s lost behind the million features of word.

Re: Want a killer product? Become more opinionated

#35

Post by bobthechef »

anoncake wrote: post #30
RyEgswuCsn wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> rather than letting them take responsibility for their own lives It would seem to me people sometimes don't want to bother figuring out what's the best way of doing X, therefore I feel it is still valuable for someone to do the research and productize his know-how on "the best way of doing X".

There's nothing wrong with having good defaults, just with not being able to override them. "Opinionated" usually means latter.

That makes it sound easy. Overriding means the capacity to be overriden. I.e., if you can change the default, then it presupposed that you have a mechanism for dealing with various options PLUS some other options. That's additional work.

Re: Want a killer product? Become more opinionated

#36

Post by HermanMartinus »

some1else wrote: post #32

Regarding the "paste without formatting by default" opinion: - Pasting a body of text with multiple headlines between two documents would require using a special paste command that explicitly preserves formatting. - Some benefits of "convention over configuration" are only present if you stick to your existing conventions. Millions of people are already used to explicitly pasting without formatting. Other remarks: -…

As an anecdote, Bear Blog https://bearblog.dev was created for a very specific kind of person and has been cracking along well because of it.

Re: Want a killer product? Become more opinionated

#37

Post by Mauricebranagh »

Jenk wrote: post #28
Mauricebranagh wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's a pretty low bar for power users BTW. Google cloud is ok for "formatting your Christmas card list in Norwegian" to use a literary allusion. But when you come to writing specs and reports used by multiple teams word /excel is still by far the best solution.

Do you have any examples of what is superior in O365? As my other reply states I've found it to be the opposite - GSuite supports _more_ than MS does online.

I did mean the real local word etc not the shite online versions.

Main thing is structured documents tracking changes, macros to automate processes.

Re: Want a killer product? Become more opinionated

#38

Post by some1else »

hexa22 wrote: post #34
some1else wrote: post #32

Regarding the "paste without formatting by default" opinion: - Pasting a body of text with multiple headlines between two documents would require using a special paste command that explicitly preserves formatting. - Some benefits of "convention over configuration" are only present if you stick to your existing conventions. Millions of people are already used to explicitly pasting without formatting. Other remarks: -…

There are certainly two use cases here. One is pasting complex blocks where you want the whole thing to copy over. And the other is copying text out of an email or website where you want it treated as dumb text. Word actually offers a solution with the “paste without formatting” but it’s lost behind the million features of word.

> Word actually offers a solution with the “paste without formatting” but it’s lost behind the million features of word.

Yes. The Tweet was advocating for making that the default paste logic.

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