If You're Not Gonna Use It, Why Are You Building It?

She asked, "Why would you put any money at all in the stock market, where one day it was worth more than you started with and the next day it was worth less? When you could put it into a savings account and every month it was worth a little bit more and never less?"

That question set the stage for an interesting discussion about risk and return, but the really important part was a discussion about money, money that you needed to pay the bills, vs money that you needed "just in case", vs money that you were saving to have available in 30 or 40 years for your retirement. The complexity of money management is something that develops with a deeper understanding of the role of money in the context of your current and future life goals. A mutual fund is of little value to an 8 year old, but a great tool for someone planning their retirement.

The linked article shows someone who has a photo manipulation program, and that program has image adjustment tools that he has never used. He erroneously generalizes that to an unsupported hypothesis that nobody ever uses those tools, and then goes on to talk about photo applications which are much less flexible (Instagram and its competitors) and how he does use their tools. It is a great learning moment.

This is a huge trap for young entrepreneurs and it helps to think about it and not fall into it. The platitude is "know your customers." This guy clearly gets along just fine with a tool which makes amusing transformations 'easy' sort of the MacOS photobooth equivalent. And yet the tools he belittles in his mini-rant are ones that are used daily by artists all around the world, and there are even companies built around still more manipulation 'effects' because an artist doesn't see a picture, they see input into what they are trying to express.

So when your customers come to you and ask you for these features in your tools, it helps you get to know them better and helps you understand their needs. And while we often start by building tools for ourselves, if we can add a feature that other people find useful (even if we don't) and it gives wider appeal to that tool, its a Good Thing to do. Even if, as posited, we are not gonna use it.

Critically, the user actually prefers iPhones, or he would actually use an antique film camera. But that doesn't matter to him and it doesn't matter to his friend and it doesn't matter to Instagram.

c.f. The discussion about using emotions to sell software.

P.S. Photoshop is also an emotionally compelling piece of software, but its narrative is completely different. For one thing, if you use Photoshop, you get to sneer at this blog post.

When you want to create a block of marble or granite or clouds, then suddenly all those filters you never even knew existed turn out to be quite useful.

If you find yourself creating something, and you don't understand how it will be used, and you don't plan on using it yourself, then it's time to take a few steps back and reevaluate what you're doing.

Agreed. The disconnect here is that he thinks the people who created Photoshop don't know or care how it gets used.

I think there's reason why Photoshop is the de-facto standard for artists and designers.

There are some fantastic digital filters available that try to mimic the look of film, infrared, vignette filters, colored filters with B&W film, etc. These have been available for years, and a company like Olympus has a successful products line of DSLR, rangefinder that have one-touch access to filters like neon, etc. These can be fun for about 2 weeks, but some people use them to great effect.

I could play the luddite snob and sneer at the output of camera-phones with "retro" filters. But a quick look at Flickr demonstrates that people are making some amazingly interesting images with this digital filters.

As far as the authors assertion that developers might take note of "unused" watercolor type filters built into Photoshop. Photoshop's stock filters are different in that they are designed to be combined, layered, etc.

In 2011, there is nothing interesting about an image presented with one application of the Watercolor filter. A retro look with the stock install of PS is not a one-click operation. To achieve that look takes work on PS. But, there are countless PS filters from NIK and others that mimic old films, Ilford, the now defunct Kodachrome slide film, Fujichrome Velvia, and on and on. The better ones cost $$$. I suspect that if people had access to them, they would use them. Only then would you be able to approach the instantaneous gratification of an app like Instagram.

This is a pretty good rule, right? Even if no one else pays to use it at least you've built a tool to make your life a little easier, or solve a problem you have.

An exception to this rule though, would be people already selling a service to customers and turning this into a product you can reuse for others (I think Carbonmade started kind of like this - they had non-technical friends/acquaintances that needed galleries set up). In fact this would probably be better than simply building a product you'd use yourself as you've already validated that people are willing to pay to use it, not just use it.