msson

Here’s why this section is about Controls: every day, your cursor protects you from unclear UI. It helpfully turns into a text cursor as you hover over textboxes, or a hand as you hover over a link or action item. iPad has no such thing. Bad UI will stick out like a sore thumb, both in apps and on websites. Your tappable areas had better look tappable. Your controls had better look controllable. That decorative little page-curl in the corner of that entry had better turn a page. Without being able to subconsciously hover-to-test, users will end up frustrated at anything that doesn’t do what it looks like it should do, or vice-versa.

People like Instapaper because of the features it has now and the way they’re designed into the app. If I let users steer product decisions, the result would be a massive codebase producing a bloated, cluttered product full of features that hardly anyone used at the expense of everyday usability and polish on the features that matter. Like Microsoft Word. Or Firefox. By listening too much to outside suggestions, I’d destroy the very reason why I’m receiving them.