Day 124: Telling Users No

product

Recently, I launched a version of Intention that blurs the background so that you can’t sneak a peek behind the lock.

Before:

After:

This was a good change. When the background was visible, I’d notice myself getting distracted by reading the headlines behind the lock. Many users noted the same thing.

After the change, I got feedback like the following:

WOW! The blurred background is a huge improvement and makes it much harder to ignore the pop-up window and distract myself on the site. Thanks for thinking up this feature, it’s a brilliant idea.

But I also got this:

I am really loving the plugin! Thanks for making it.
The most recent versions blur the background - which actually causes more wasted time -
If I can read the page highlights (like google news) before the pop-up appears, my urge to distraction is satisfied and I can return to the task at hand in less than a 5 seconds with the “rude” reminder from Intention.
Overall, great plugin. Please keep doing what you are. Would help if you blur the background a few seconds after the pop-up though.

Everyone works differently, and that means that for any change you make, there will always be someone who doesn’t agree.

The common trap that many makers fall into is to provide a setting that allows the user to choose for themselves. In my case, it would mean adding an option to select whether to blur the background and if so, how long of a delay there should be before it kicks in. Then everyone would be happy!

That would be a big mistake.

Every option you add comes with a meaningful cost:

  • It places additional cognitive load on your users. Every setting you add is another set of information that your users have to try to understand and make a decision for. Is it worth adding an extra burden on your users?
  • It has to be maintained. This is especially important to consider if you’re a solo developer (like me) with limited resources. Is it worth taking time away from all the other things you could be doing?
  • It’s much harder to take back an option once you’ve provided it. Users will be more upset if they lose something they once had than if they never had the option in the first place. Is it worth keeping around forever?

Products are much better when they’re simple and opinionated than when they’re designed to try to satisfy everyone. With the latter approach, it’s easy to end up with something like the following settings page:

This was for another productivity extension, and I felt overwhelmed upon installing it. I never got around to setting it up because it just seemed so complicated.

I want Intention to be different. I want Intention to be ridiculously simple and to Just Work. I want my users to have the best, and that means sometimes telling them no.