All Products have two kinds of properties: features and burdens.
I don’t want anything that asserts “managed” as a feature. Me having to manage something is a burden. Me not having to manage it is a feature.
BUT, if I don’t have to manage it, it better not do something that I wouldn’t have it do if I was managing it. And therein lies the rub; I am exceptional at making good decisions about how I want something to be for me. Chances are you are not.
Not only are you not good at making the decisions I would make, you aren’t good at making the decisions any of the rest of your customers would make. However, because you want us to buy your crappy product, so you try to average out the extremes and make something pleasing to “most of the people, most of the time”. That is an excellent starting point for that special kind of pouring-gasoline-on-excrement-in-a-metal-can-on-a-90-degree-day-and-lighting-it-on-fire kind of pungent mediocrity and if you work really hard, you might raise your product up to that level. Your mother would be so proud.
Really terrific products that make me smile and excited and want to share them with everyone I know are the ones that elegantly address my burdens in completely unobtrusive ways without adding new burdens as a consequence. This is technae in its true form; obsessive, beautiful, artistry that pours a mastery learned over a lifetime into a single object cradled in the love of the yearning for the liberation of the eidos.
EVERYTHING else in the world is junk. The best junk is the open junk that doesn’t try to keep me from making good decisions about how I want something to be for me; the worst junk is the closed junk that doesn’t let me deviate from your bad decisions that you are trying to force upon me. Somewhere in the middle is the junk that tries to be open but no matter how open it is, it fails to actually do anything useful. That is the difference between acceptably insufficient junk that can be tolerated enough to get on with my life and truly worthless festering crap that makes me long to be eaten by a grue to put me out of my misery.
So that means that if you aren’t an artist with technae seeping from your pores, me having to manage something that is easy to open up and get inside, and can be quickly made to do what I want is absolutely the best you can hope for and thus, the only thing you should put into your product are things that make it do what it is supposed to, and things that make it easy and painless for me to fix it when it doesn’t. Everything else is a burden worse than being eaten by a grue.
This message brought to you by the squid3 configuration file, Ubuntu Unity, the GE Profile reverse osmosis water filtration system, the new Google Maps, the contractor who built my house, Android networking, TWC, and the letter Q.