You're Disrupting the Wrong Market

Let me hop on up here for a moment. Because the world of software has gotten out of hand.

We live in a world that champions change. Companies constantly jostle for market position with 'innovations' that often feel less like actual improvement and more like a bloat of unnecessary features, or yet another layout redesign. Everything, we're told, is about evolution - the idea that to remain competitive, we must perpetually transform and adapt. We have to disrupt.

But let's take a step back. While change is often good, is the constant disruption really helping us or is it, in fact, undermining user experience (UX)?

Remember the last time your favorite software app rolled out a 'necessary' new feature, or revamped its entire interface overnight? Did you celebrate because your user experience was magically enhanced? Or did you grumble, scrambling to relearn something that, quite frankly, didn't need fixing in the first place?

This phenomenon isn't isolated to your weather app or your favorite mobile game; it's cropping up everywhere, from banking to the digital tools we use for work. And it's particularly prevalent with Software as a Service (SaaS) and subscription-based products.

Take our bank records as an example. There's a straightforward, age-old process that we follow: we log in, check our balance, and maybe pay a bill or two. We don't need - or want - a cutting-edge VR experience or AI-infused personal finance avatar to 'enhance' our experience. But the incessant drive to innovate has led many companies to disrupt for disruption's sake, often at the expense of UX. We don’t need things to be shinier or flashier. We need them to just work.

This constant disruption creates a paradox: in our race to streamline and improve, we're making things more cumbersome. We promise new technology for simplicity, but deliver complexity. There's a fine line between evolution and convolution, and many companies seem to have lost sight of this.

Reduction, not addition, is the secret ingredient of the current digital landscape. The truly innovative companies are those that streamline, that distill the complex into the simple, that strip back the extraneous to leave only what's essential. These are the ones that reduce friction and amplify user-friendliness, making their products or services more accessible and less of a chore to engage with.

A successful business is one that can foster an engaged, renewing, and expanding customer base. Let's not confuse innovation with complication. Companies who embrace stability and avoid unnecessary changes are likely to build long-lasting trust and loyalty with their users. Remember, even in the age of AI, crypto, SaaS, and constant market pressure, sometimes the best upgrade is no upgrade at all.