It just works
Have you used something without realizing that it is present and helping you reach your objective?
Imagine a cab ride. You are going somewhere, thinking about the place you want to reach. You have things on your mind, you are checking your phone, it is a long journey. You were late in the morning. You did X but missed doing Y, and now you are reconfirming in your head that whatever you left at home is fine. These are the thoughts in your head. And when you get off the ride, the same thoughts are still in your head.
So what, you would say - what is special about this? The thing is, this is how the ride is supposed to be. You are in your own head and you are happily there. But that only happens when the driver is emotionally aware enough to let you be there. He is in the car because he has to be, and you did not even think about him. Imagine how many cab rides you have taken - you do not remember any of the drivers. A cab ride is meant to be about you, not about them.
That is the boundary of this service: you pay money, the service takes you to a place, and that is it. Anything additional, if present, has to be pleasing - otherwise it should not be present. If it is a song, it has to be to your liking; if it is not your liking, silence is better. If it is noise, that is a problem. If the AC is off, that is a problem - now you have to remember it, and talk to the person to get it adjusted. Any small thing you have to ask for or do is an inconvenience, a detour against your main goal: reaching your destination peacefully and enjoying the ride.
It may seem nitpicky. But think of the perfect ride. The door opens by itself, you hop in, and it takes you where you want to go. The AC is set to the exact temperature you want, the cab is clean, there is a good fragrance, and there is no diversion - nothing blocking your flow of thoughts. That is the ideal experience for the vast majority of users. And the end result is that you take a cab without thinking about getting into the cab or getting out of it.
You have to reach the point where people are so comfortable that they stop suspecting the driver. When Uber launched in India, people were hesitant about so many things: who is this person driving the cab, will they take the right route, will they drive through a shady area, will they try to take cash. Now people just hop in and hop out and everything flows. It is now at a point where we say “it just works”.
Many of the most successful products have reached a point where we can say “it just works”. Think about WhatsApp. You do not think about WhatsApp - that is the main thing. You open the app, click on the person you want to talk to, shoot out a message, and you are done. A notification pops up, you reply, or you choose to ghost - up to you - and you are done. You do not think about when the message will reach, what the latency is, whether someone is reading your messages, whether messages can get lost in transit, whether you have a monthly limit on messages. The product… just… works…
Think about Mac versus Windows. A Mac “just works”. Think about an e-bike versus a normal bike. Think about a Tesla versus a normal car. When “it just works”, it sticks.
Think about going to the gym every morning, even for a light load, versus going on alternate days or whenever you have time. You are always more consistent when you stick to a routine - and that is because the routine “just works”. Less friction, less deviation, higher chances of sticking to something, higher chances of achieving the thing, higher chances of getting the outcome rather than being absorbed by the friction in the process.
Think about a person who takes a task from their manager, and the manager does not have to think twice about whether it will get done on time. They can just rely on the person. “It just works.”
Think about your parents for a second. You go home, and there are no conditions. It is your home: you get good food, you get good sleep, you can talk about whatever, there is no judgment. It is your safe space. There are exceptions here and there, but that is the base experience. Again, “it just works”.
Think about a video game that keeps you hooked. “It just works.”
“It just works” is the core philosophy for any product. Now think about a government website. It just does not work. You have to spend way more time on it than you need to, because someone was inefficient or the task was not prioritized. Government websites are notoriously slow - this is across the globe, not one particular government I am unhappy with.
Think about sending a post. Why do you not send letters anymore? Because email “just works”. Anything that “just works” will replace something that does not. And if something better comes along that “just works” better than the earlier thing, it is winner takes all - more on that in a future post.
Think about voice typing. It “just works”. You do not have to think about it, you do not have to worry about making a mistake. Technology gets adoption when it “just works”. Think about AI. It “just works” - so well that it is getting billions in funding and trillion-dollar IPOs.
So if you do not remember anything else from this, remember this: what can you do to make sure that what you are building “just works”?