Software for Groups

I continue to go on the record about how much I am bored by personal software.

all value is in connection or workflow, “personal software” is so lame to me

Me, on Twitter

Which is controversial in many ways. Not to mention easy to argue against. Personal software is literally tailormade to the workflow of a particular individual, you don’t get more workflow-ey than that. Hah, Workflowy. That’s funny.

The abundance should lead to a filling in of the unprofitable niches. “Don’t sell to atudents!” is a classic of the genre, warning against a demographic that is both broke and eager to share resources.

Fun problems await

Not to say that designing for individuals is over, that would be like saying “language is over, let everyone come up with their own way of speaking and we will have AI translating between them”. But I do think the artifact of that design should no longer look like an app, but can live a level above that. But that’s a topic for a separate post/s!

Good design generalises

One fun part of watching people futz around with the new bots is seeing how many of them make things they’re excited about for approximately 2 days, and speedrun. It’s a great time to be someone with strong opinions about “this is how software should be done”, and a humbling time too.

There’s a naive mantra about product design that goes something like “when you make something that’s functional for everybody, you make something that’s not great for anybody”.

It’s easier to start from a bad idea and slowly make things bearable when working on something for yourself, but it’s

Encryption/privacy

But if you’re end-to-end enrypting with a key that’s shared, that’s much less to worry about.

Group engagement

I’ve recently started to give names to my beliefs around product design (like Interface Anxiety)

What are y’all trying to achieve?

Longevity & trust

Make money, maybe