Opinionated or Un-opinionated Software

Exploring when software gives you a toolbox or guides you to the outcome.

Software has an opinion. And I’m not talking about an AI-generated opinion. I’m not sure we are quite there yet.

Software has an opinion on how you, as the user, ought to use it.

The opinion might be, “Architect me to be used how you see fit!”

Or the opinion might be, “By using me, you accept not only our software but our approach to the problem our software solves.”

Un-Opinionated Software

I’m an architect (thinker). I think through systems and structures. I’m always thinking and rethinking how something should be organized, arranged, and approached.

Because of this, I am a mega-fan of un-opinionated software. At the base of un-opinionated software is a set of tools.

It probably goes back to my early days with Photoshop. Photoshop was never going to tell me what to design or what was good or bad design.

It was going to give me a pen tool, a text tool, and layers for me to build out my designs. It was going to give me a color palette and parameters for each tool to customize my usage. It was my toolbox and my canvas, but it didn’t have an opinion of what I did with it. I was as excited as I was to see what we would make together.

That approach has been followed by many SaaS or enterprise tools used by companies around the world.

Think, Excel, Word, or PowerPoint. A set of tools for you to architect your solutions.

Sure, each application had its constraints or maybe we should call them guardrails for the type of tools it was providing: word editor, data organizer, and calculator.

Fast forward, you start to see even more tools hit the market that, even while having a modern design direction, still offer a somewhat open canvas.

Our tool is your canvas. Do work how you do work.

Tools like Asana, Notion, Canva, Figma, Miro, etc. These are what I refer to as un-opinionated tools. Ironically, they do have a strong opinion, and that is to treat you like the architect, designer, and shaper of what you might do with their tools.

I love these tools. Like I said, I’m an architect.

The early days of Asana were even less opinionated than they are today. Any task can be a project, and any task can have subtasks. Any task can be a header, which means hierarchy is your adventure. Nest away! Or work from a never-ending list of items. Our tool is your adventure!

The same is true of solutions like Miro, Notion, Obsidian, Coda, and more. Have an approach that needs a home? Imagine it here.

But what if you’re not an architect? What if you just need to know the best way to get the job done?

An opinionated tool can be extremely frustrating and cluttered if you do not have the creativity, desire, or patience to architect a vision for the way the tool could be used.

Well, that, my friends, is where most software is happy to serve you.

Opinionated Software

We may think that we have control of the way we do our work, but when procurement buys the most recent version of Office 360 or Google Business, we’re adopting an opinion that Microsoft or Google has about the way they see work ought to be done.

You will get a new email in a list that displays only subject lines.

You’ll have email filtered into inbox, spam, social, and updates.

You’ll reply in threads or you’ll reply in new messages.

You’ll store your files in a directory.

You’ll store your files in an online folder with permission handled this way or that.

Slack over Teams (the right decision, by the way).

HubSpot over Salesforce (no right decisions there).

You’ll organize your conversations in threads and sub-threads.

You’ll @reference people. You’ll create channels or group chats.

Want to do it a different way? Use a different tool.

Think about your product management solution. Does it suggest that you use epics, stories, story points, and burn-down charts? It has an opinion that projects should be managed this way. Thanks, Jira.

Opinionated software can be very frustrating when you have that one use case that’s just outside of the primary design of the tool. It’s 90% what you’re looking for, but your workflow just annoyingly doesn’t quite fit.

A Spectrum of Opinions

Much like human beings, software is not binary about its opinions. It is ultimately binary in its base code.

Humans are not 100% analytical or creative, 100% introverted or extroverted. We’re on a spectrum.

Sometimes we have strong opinions about certain things and other times we are just going with the flow. Sometimes we are trying to forge a new innovative path, and other times we are just trying to blend into the crowd.

Software is the same in this way. Take something like Obsidian or something like Roam Research. Their thesis was around the power of bi-directional linking. Great, a unique new toolset, but still the freedom for me to architect the end result how I see fit. An opinion on a “Way” of doing things, but also open-ended to what you’ll do with it.

And the same goes for tools like Excel or Google Sheets. They have structure in how you think about rows and columns, formulas, sheets, etc. But within those constraints, go to town!

Every software has some limitations, and constraints as to what you can and can’t do with it, and ultimately how much it will guide you through a linear path to an outcome or give you the tools sets to choose your own journey.

Neither is right or wrong, but they will serve unique purposes.

Decide What You Have an Opinion About

When you’re designing a new tool or even if you’re choosing a tool, decide what you have an opinion about.

Is the opinion that you want the user to have creative freedom? Great, then be prepared to offer lots of training on how to support someone who is not quite sure how to achieve their outcome without a guide.

I saw this very shift take place in Asana over the years. I remember as an early adopter, I was invited to give a lot of feedback on the tool. Don’t change a thing, the creative freedom is great! “But we are getting a lot of requests for creating a structure for new users to follow.” Fast forward, they responded to the demand of the market, and honestly, I think it was wise. I remember members of our team also getting lost in the chaos of the architecture of our projects. If Asana had a few more constraints, maybe the team would have stayed better aligned.

I still deal with some of this in how I’ve architected my Notion today.

But also, as you dive into taking a structured approach with your software, remember that there will be trade-offs. Think about your users. If you’re launching a SaaS app and you’re trying to hit a very broad market, you might find that there are customers that your product just doesn’t fit their needs.

Designing a tool for your own company? Be prepared to make a decision on how you think work should be done in your company. Include your people in this process, but once the features starts rolling out, you’re making a very clear opinionated statement about the way things are going to be done going forward.

And maybe you can strike that brilliant balance of both. A tool that gives the user freedom but offers guidance, templates, suggestions, or integrations that meet the specific needs of the user who just wants to get work done while being flexible enough to meet their unique needs.

Un-opinionated AI

Back to the AI Opinion. While I’m not convinced that we have general intelligence that cares yet how you interact with it. Each AI product has an opinion of how you are to interact with it, but yet a very unopinionated structure to get consistent results.

Hence the popularity of prompt engineering, or selling prompt srcripts.

And sure ChatGPT popularized the LLM chat interface. But outside of creating more chat agents and a few interesting responses like code and images, the software has the opinion that you create with words.

Other AI solutions have the opinion that you engage through tool set and almost paint with AI. Again, its a spectrum. Guided specific outcome? Or toolset to create your own future?

So what do you prefer?

What about you?

Do you love to explore the edge cases of un-opinionated software that invites you to be the architect? Do you dream of complex Miro boards, Notion DB with custom properties, Excel spreadsheets with pivot tables that will make your fractional-CFO buddy jealous, or Canva and Figma designs from scratch, never from a template?

OR

Do you look forward to the rules? That guided tour tells you exactly what form fields are required, and how many steps to complete the task.

Do you think in zero-inbox, CRM lead tasks, sales funnel deal-flow, and associations between companies, deals, and people? Are you looking for that guide for how to do your job, and you are there to follow along?

Let me know.