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Want a killer product? Become more opinionated

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Re: Want a killer product? Become more opinionated

#41

Post by dgb23 »

hermannj314 wrote: post #9

Amazon recently turned on support for Amazon Sidewalk on all of their hardware in my home (convention) and decided it was fine to do this because I could opt out (configuration). That decision was the final straw for me. Every Amazon device is now unplugged, Prime membership and Amazon music canceled, no longer shopping on their site. Doing what is "easy for the average user" is not sufficient for me, some configurat…

> I shouldn't have to constantly worry that a remote code change could turn my hardware into a new source of revenue for you while I am on vacation at the beach.

This is it. It actually induces some kind of anxiety and mild paranoia.

We can also very easily support companies that don't treat their customers this way, or their workers, or business partners...

Re: Want a killer product? Become more opinionated

#42

Post by giancarlostoro »

ccity88 wrote: post #11

I feel like I read something new every week on HN about design philosophy; make your product this way not that way, try to do this and not that, here's 10 examples of products that failed because of x, here's 5 products that were successful because of y - maybe it's time to realise that there's no monolithic overarching "right" way to design a product. This is how we ended up with the current trendy cohort of minimal…

"Why this HN comment is correct on design", "Why said revered HN comment is incorrect on design", "HN comment creates cult"

Jokes aside, I tend to agree with you. No matter is so black or white, if something failed, it was a host of things that went wrong. If something succeeded, it was as well numerous things. The most common successful factors are the ones people role their eyes over cause everyone already knows 'dedication' and 'hard work' are factors, but they don't always get you results, they're just the most common factors.

Re: Want a killer product? Become more opinionated

#43

Post by phkahler »

>> Opinionated products are better than flexible products.

But they will rub some users the wrong way, and that's OK. In the open source CAD world you see the distinction in Solvespace vs FreeCAD. One is loved by its users as an easy, highly productive tool, if a bit odd looking. The other is regarded as more capable and feature complete - which is true - but is considered bloated, annoying, and crash-prone by users of the former.

There is definitely room for both approaches, or even multiple "this is the one true way" products. If you delight a segment of the market you'll never be obsolete.

Re: Want a killer product? Become more opinionated

#44

Post by Torwald »

hermannj314 wrote: post #9

Amazon recently turned on support for Amazon Sidewalk on all of their hardware in my home (convention) and decided it was fine to do this because I could opt out (configuration). That decision was the final straw for me. Every Amazon device is now unplugged, Prime membership and Amazon music canceled, no longer shopping on their site. Doing what is "easy for the average user" is not sufficient for me, some configurat…

What grates me with these situations is that they have my data, which is one thing, but I don't have access to that data!

Re: Want a killer product? Become more opinionated

#45

Post by gwbas1c »

About a year ago I wrote a Mac application to strip formatting out of copy-pasted text. (Note: I was mostly interested in getting an application in the store as a learning exercise.)

In general, copying formatted text is a mess on Mac. (I haven't tried an equivalent Windows app, although I'm primarily a Windows developer.) The problem is that many of the data structures for formatted text don't preserve context. IE, it's impossible to know that something is just "italic," "bold," or "underline," because the formatting is details about how to render the fonts. IE, "italic" converts to kerning, "bold" and "underline" are really separate fonts.

In theory, I could try to infer formatting changes, and then convert to very basic HTML, but I only had about a month in between jobs to finish the app.

Link: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/copy-cleaner/id1521489777?mt=1...

Re: Want a killer product? Become more opinionated

#46

Post by JohnStrangeII »

a4isms wrote: post #16
jhunter1016 wrote: post #8

If you are chasing RFPs, propose and build everything that checks all the boxes. If you are a product company and building for people who will hopefully love your product, it’s your job to understand the customers, understand the data, and build the right solution rather than building ALL the solutions.

Some where in the mythical “Business 101” course is the lesson that you can either find a customer and figure out what they need (customer-focus), or find a need and figure out which customers have that need (product-focus). This dynamic is everywhere: Apple has customers, they look at what their customers need, and do various product extensions (like streaming games) to fill their needs. Whereas many vendors on the…

Some companies just create new needs out of thin air and even manage to replace better technologies with inferior ones. It's mostly a matter of marketing.

If you want, many companies sell prestige, lifestyle ideas, and grand illusions. It's perfect from a business perspective because the customers will always remain dissatisfied in the end, no matter how much they buy.

Re: Want a killer product? Become more opinionated

#47

Post by Torwald »

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

"Opinionated software" is a established term, hence the use I guess.

Re: Want a killer product? Become more opinionated

#48

Post by polote »

This article mix a bit of everything. There are no rules to create a killer product. That's the whole purpose of the product management domain.

Regarding opinionated software they are great at creating alignment between people who have different background. But are not really good for complex use case. Look at excel, nobody is going to say that this is not a killer product but still being not opinionated at all. On the other side Github is a killer product and very opinionated.

But anything is possible, look I'm currently building an alternative to Confluence. You could say that knowledge management is a perfect area for opinionated software, so why is Notion (not opinionated) the killer product in that domain now ?

Re: Want a killer product? Become more opinionated

#49

Post by digitalbase »

rob74 wrote: post #13

> Conventions create an opinionated product. Opinions create user delight. User delight creates successful businesses. The problem with opinionated products is people who have very strong opposite opinions. Go for example is a famously opinionated language - it even has a standardized way to format source code via go fmt which everyone uses. But if these opinions clash with the opinions of equally opinionated people,…

Isn't having an opinion + figuring out how to match that w customer needs exactly what product management is?

I mean any product manager has to make a lot of decisions. Having an opinion does help in making decisions

Re: Want a killer product? Become more opinionated

#50

Post by cma »

hermannj314 wrote: post #9

Amazon recently turned on support for Amazon Sidewalk on all of their hardware in my home (convention) and decided it was fine to do this because I could opt out (configuration). That decision was the final straw for me. Every Amazon device is now unplugged, Prime membership and Amazon music canceled, no longer shopping on their site. Doing what is "easy for the average user" is not sufficient for me, some configurat…

Can you opt out of Apple's similar thing for airtags?
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