Craft, Taste, and Quality

Craft shows you know how to design a better quality product, and taste shows that you know how to brand it and market it differently

Just listened to Karri Saarinen's talk from Figma's Config.

He argues that:

↳ "Technology makes it easier to build, but harder to care (for the craft)"

↳ "We replaced purpose with metrics"

↳ And we delegated "judgment to AB testing"

And he thinks that the reason for that is that:

↳ "When you can do more and focus on the process"

↳ You can distance yourself from understanding "what's the right solution"

Here are my two cents on these claims:

1) At its core, technology is a deflationary force

• It IS about *doing more with less*

• It's the designer's job to intimately know a process' status quo

• Abstract it's key components and first principles

• And design an incrementally or radically better way of conducting such process

So NO — I don't think it's technology's fault that we lose focus on the craft.

2) I think it's about the *market* dynamics

• Tech VCs demand VOLUME, SCALE, and NOW > quality

• This begets speed to win over competition and maximize returns

• And AI (extremely deflationary tech) lowers barrier to entry

• Compounding this frantic competition, and speed to win over others

It's the capitalistic nature of tech and its hyper-competitive dynamics that I think are at the core of our frantic race towards metrics in spite of craft/quality

(not saying it's a bad thing but this is more like it than tech itself)

3) In this market, QUALITY = fx(CRAFT) = DIFFERENTIATION → because it's scarce

BUT it's not abstract, even Karri shows it in his slides:

• Linear has tenets on quality coming from their customers — who qualify it as ↓

• Intentionality, seamlessness, speed, personal, and scale (all proxies of "quality")

• Seamlessness = knowledge of the customers' process and experience

• Intentionality = developing opinions that show you've empathized with customers

• Personal = making the customer feel listened to (back to empathy)

• Speed = deliver solutions based on intentionality, fast (eg. support)

• Scale = the whole team delivers with consistent intentionality and speed

↓↓↓

4) From quality = fx(craft) to TASTE

• Quality is not abstract but RELATIVE because it depends on TASTE

• Which is determined by the tastemakers of a specific sector/industry

• Tastemakers are those who turn deep understanding of the market into strong POVs

• That's why Linear has emerged as a mature, hyper-competitive market

• They deeply understood the proxies of quality *their customers care about*

• And baked them into their product as "craft" and in their marketing as "taste"

So in the end, I believe

1. In tech, you must have speed, do volumes, and deliver numbers to play the game

2. B/c of market dynamics, while most catch up w/competition, craft and taste get lost

3. But if you want to play the long game, you must layer craft and taste on top

4. Craft shows you know how to design a different, better quality product

5. And taste shows that you know how to brand it and market it differently

PS. Thanks Karri for the inspo on this rabbit hole — big fan of Linear!