5 Comments

Coming from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35040451

Wrong from the headline alone: There ARE needs for a faster dishwasher - you didn't take into account scenarios where dishes need to be cleaned quickly.

The immediate branding of most technical improvements as superfluous nonsense fails to recognize the additional use cases brought upon with the easier/faster/safer method available with <insert product here>.

This entire article is similar to when Dropbox was showed to HN: Lambasting the technical improvements made to the UX of backups as something that's 'wasted effort' & 'already doable with <insert setup process here>', whilst completely missing the bigger picture.

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Alright. A more accurate although less memorable concept could have been: "*Most people* don't need a faster dishwasher." I'd be the first to agree Dropbox solves important customer needs, or they wouldn't be worth $7B.

I think you are misunderstanding my argument. It's not that most tech improvements are nonsense, it's that if you want to build a successful product, it's valuable to start with customer development (understanding needs, or the "jobs" people are trying to fulfill by hiring your product) and then product development. Doing it the other way around can lead to having a product that is technologically superior, but doesn't hit "the spot" for customers... which is often really unfortunate.

If anything, it's the people who think Dropbox is useless who would tend to make this mistake. Hope this clarifies and thanks for reading.

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Agree with your point about Dropbox, but Dropbox keeps adding features I have absolutely no interest in, yet I pay for it through my subscription… I wish they would instead fix the bugs I care about, but they don’t.

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Speaking of real customer needs, somehow your EarthLetter website has disabled Chrome's functionality to automatically fill in addresses. Plz fix, you are probably losing people from that funnel

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Hey thanks, I know. It's an issue with TypeForm, that only they can fix. I actually do have the data, and there is <2% drop-off on that step of the form. A perfect example of something that could be improved, but won't affect the output much. Thank you for signing up.

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