Kill the HiPPO: My favourite chapter
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Hello! Kill the HiPPO newsThe German-language site produktbezogen.de has a post about Kill the HiPPO - in German! I’m still looking for podcast guest opportunities - particularly lower profile ones at this stage where I can hone my message without the stress of a big audience. If you have a personal connection to someone who runs a suitable podcast, I’d love an introduction. Thanks to the two people who suggested applying to be on the biggest and mightiest product management podcasts of them all - it’s good to aim big! My favourite chapterA parent should not state that one of their children is their favourite. Likewise I shouldn’t state that one chapter of Kill the HiPPO is my favourite, given that each tells the story of a founder who graciously opened up to us. So, yes they are all my favourites, but as my daughter would say, my “favourite favourite” is Chapter 6: “Add a button; remove a button.” It tells the story of how Max Seelemann avoids feature bloat in his Ulysses writing app, while his competitors struggle with feature bloat. "If we need to add a button, we need to remove another button. If we add a new setting, we have to remove another setting. Then, if most people choose a particular setting, we can remove it and introduce a new setting," explains Max. "The general idea isn't to add complexity, but rather evolve the product." Software tends to get complex and—surprisingly—worse over time, at least along some axes of measurement. After several years of building my product Feature Upvote I found myself looking at our settings panels and asking:
Now that I’ve adopted Max’s philosophy, that to add a button or setting, you must first find something equivalent to remove, I feel we are on the path of recapturing that original simplicity. Fun fact: After discovering Max’s Ulysses app in our interview - and truly seeing how simple it was - I used it heavily when working on the second half of the book! It was only when we hit the post-writing steps, such as copy editing, proofreading, and layout, that we had to switch to Microsoft Word, which the professional end of the publishing industry seems to run on. Until next week, keep building great software! Steve McLeod |