Unrecognisable Casualties of the Growth Cult

When I recently logged into my Mailchimp account, I quickly got frustrated trying to navigate my way around all the things I didn’t want to do. Even more off-putting than dealing with the usability challenges of feature bloat are the constant little hints that I’m not doing enough.

Mailchimp keeps telling me to “boost sales with shoppable landing pages and social media ads”. With every update, Dropbox reminds me that it needs access to my calendar, so I can make full use of “the world’s first smart workspace”. Seemingly every week, Adobe notifies me about some new cloud feature that will “enhance my creativity”.

Like a good kitchen knife, software tools should give us a sense of empowerment – the confidence of being in control. Sadly, the pressure to gain market share often does the opposite and turns simple tools into cumbersome multitools that leave us feel overwhelmed and inadequate.

Maybe that’s just the ‘natural’ progression of commercially successful software, and sure, we have plenty of alternatives to choose from. But still, it’s a shame to witness so many of my favourite digital tools become unrecognisable casualties of the growth cult.

– Kai
(from Dense Discovery Issue 93)