Should we start with UX and then figure out the technology or should we come up with the technology and then figure out the UX?
Steve Jobs said it should be the former.
What do you think? š¤
Discussion
I'm definitely in alignment with figuring out the technology and then the UX.
I guess the way I see it, if the technology isn't there then UX really doesn't matter until the tech is solid.
UX always matters if you want people that aren't tech savvy to actually use it.
Depends on what your goal is, do you want to make sure the technology is just right and can't be subverted later on? Or do you just want the most amount of people to interface with your product?
More often than not the goal is to capture as much as the adressable market as possible as fast as possible.
But I agree with you that it depends on the goal.
If you are a dev building for yourself and it so happens that people found your software somewhat useful it wonāt change the fact that you are just building it for yourself: the UX will inevitably be less of a priority to you.
Not just the "for yourself" usecase, there are some technologies where it's much much more imperative that the software works as it's intended to much much more than how it looks and feels, for example: Linux, Bitcoin and any viable protocol like tcp/nostr
That is still building it for yourself and people who think like you.
It does not cater to those that have a different opinion on their idea of what the app should be.
UX first. if the UX is done right it shouldn't matter
Start with the problem worth fixing, if you have a compelling validation gradually improve UX. Words ARE CHEAP, value isnāt. Meaning that validation needs to be supported by real value spent by the target users. In my experience āpositive feedbackā is almost worthless, on the contrary discounted pre-sale (as an example) is valuable validation.
Always UX first, for a product. You shouldn't even be thinking about the tech stack, during the initial design phase.
1. Figure out, what you want to do.
2. Figure out, how to do it.
I feel increasingly like the Nostr ecosystem is sort of crumbling under the weight of devs doing this backward. They have a Nostr hammer and just go around, hammering things, hoping it might be a nail.
Figure out where you want to place the painting, first. Figure out if you'll need a nail to hang it. _Then_ bring out the hammer... or a drill or tape or carve out a shelf, or whatnot.
This requires you to have a real product vision, tho. You have to focus on "display the painting", not "build with Nostr". Which means you need at least one person on the team who is obsessed with the idea of displaying paintings.
I agree with you.
I think Primal and Damus are perfect examples of two products that are built UX-first and technology-first mindsets, respectively.
You can tell Primal is all about UX, the interface is gorgeus and intuitive. For all we know their backend could be a horrible spaguetti mess and we nobody would know or care. They are willing to make sacrifices in terms of technology choices (e.g. using centralized servers) but they try and make up for that in other ways like open sourcing some of it. Pragmatic users will find Primal a better choice, but for those with a strong ideological stance using Primal may leave them feelingā¦ dirty. If people wanāt a feature you can bet the Primal team is listening and will make it happen, eventually.
Damus family of products on the other hand, built by the prolific William Casarin and team, have a focus on performance and donāt make compromises in terms of the protocol, censorship resistance, and other idelogical stances held by the devs. Their roadmap is laid with the features they themselves want. This means some features wonāt see the light of day because they arenāt worth pursuing (in their view) or would jeopardize the integrity of their software. "GIFs" and "badges" straight to /dev/null.
None are wrong, IMO, they just cater to different kinds of users.
Using the wrong software may make people feel alienatd, frustrated, and disappointed though, so instead of trying to change the devs people should just change the software. At least on Nostr thereās plenty of options.
instead of trying to constantly point this out all the time we are changing our focus to just promoting damus to technical users. I want to build tech for the people who appreciate nostr core values. this is still a large untapped market, and will allow us to focus on building value for those users instead of trying to compete with centralized features which won't be possible after awhile.
I just wish there was more high-quality content. X's data is large, but it's also full of low-quality content. Technical users will also like it and it can also reflect the value. But how can the distribution guarantee quality?
I think this is too focused on the global-microblogging aspect of nostr. technical users will appreciate other aspects, such as the ability to run your own uncensorable community with a large set of compatible tools. We can purple pill way more people this way.
TouchƩ. Primal is addressing the centralized version of nostr.
UX = job
Tech = tools
Find the tools for the job
That said, sometimes you get a very cool tool and you make up a job for it š
Ux first, that's why the clients came before zapstore and blossom.
there is no UX with our a minimum technology substrate to be based on. If you need some big breakthrough to make the UX work, and wait the UX for starting the tech part,, you are fucked. but people underestimate how far we can achieve with the stuff we already have, so, in most cases, starting with the UX is the right thing
I like this thread. So much wisdom and different points of view clashing against each other
ux first ,people are attracted to pretty girls, no one attracted to the ugly girl even if shes smart and kind
I think that none of both. In my opinion the first is should be oppotunity validation, then design and development. In my opinion is worthless design or develop something that is not delivering value to the user or to the business.
But... it could and should be parallel with an open communication channel in between aka product management.
We engineers are great problem solvers, we product designers are great problem solvers.
I am in agreement with Jobs.
If your app is powerful in a theoretical sense (usage of technology) but looks like absolute ass - who'll use it except that niche that doesn't care for UX? x)