Engagement isn’t the future of software — so stop prioritizing it
It’s time we stop harassing users without providing any additional value
Don’t let software get in your users’ way
Imagine, if you will, a world in which hammers were optimized for engagement. They could maybe make a sound every day, just to remind you that you have a hammer.
They could have Wi-Fi, with push notifications, letting you know how many nails you drove in one year ago today. Maybe there’s the occasional note about new hammers you could purchase.
It’s a silly idea for a hammer. In a few years, people will also realize it was a silly idea for work software — so you better adapt.
People, and businesses especially, will increasingly look for software that’s less like a social network and more like a hammer. The future of software will be focused on enabling workers, not driving engagement. It’s about putting humans back in the driver’s seat.
People want software that allows them to have leverage over the work they do. To truly be able to do more things, with less. That means creating software people can use to do a job, then stop thinking about.
My co-foundersand I founded Zapier on these principles — and I feel all software creators should do the same. We shouldn’t demand people’s time. Instead, we should give users the freedom and flexibility to do whatever they think is most important, while helping them automate the rest.
Let your apps work for you
The best employee is one you can trust to do their job without a lot of oversight. People who save you time, rather than take it up. Software should work the same way. People should be able to hire software to do a job, then trust it to get that job done without a lot of effort on their part.
Automation software is a great example of this. Creating automated workflows takes some time upfront, but after that, it works in the background. It saves users time every month, whether they log in to the website or not.
This is the future of software: apps doing moreforus instead of demanding morefromus. So if you want to succeed, apply this to the products you make, and help empower the next generation of creators.
This article by Wade Foster is based on a previous piece, originally published on theZapier blog. You can read the original articlehere.
Story byWade Foster
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