users didnt ask for slow apis either but there they are. I am speaking for the user here and sharing their frustration. Allowing UI modification to fit the user needs should be a default now. The APIs already act as a gaurdrail on what's possible
Configurability in moderation is fine, but go too far and users can hurt each other. JIRA is famous for this: managers customize the life out of it at others' expense.
> In the end, your obligation as a company, regardless of your product, is to generate profits.
No denying that. SaaS started with a user problem at the center of it and as they scaled, forgot about an individual user. This only presents the user frustration and a possible solution to it.
If you're building for individual users you're not going to succeed. We all prioritize for broad success from the beginning.
I'm very into the idea of inversion of control and giving users this flexibility but I agree with GP that the SaaS company critique is misplaced. I hope you find enough success with 100X that you end up coming to the same conclusion.
I'll also add that one of your video examples is essentially a Twitter spam generator; is that the kind of feature you think SaaS companies should be prioritizing?
I created that twitter responder after reading this post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47568028). That wasn't to call out what SaaS companies should prioratise but to show how easy it would be for a user to do it.
I think the right step would be to somehow communicate to the vendor that this feature is needed (eliminating the PM backlog BS) and their coding Agents should pick it and build it. The real moat they have is SaaS vendors have everyone believe that trivial feature requests take time to implement.
> have everyone believe that trivial feature requests take time to implement.
This could not be more wrong. Features do, because telling a user they can do X comes with a standing promise that it works, the results are correct, the ui is accessible, the feature cleanly interacts with all other features in the system (both now and in the future), corner cases are worked out, etc. And that burden is where prod+eng spend time.
There is an entire industry of Salesforce, Workday, ServiceNow consultants and almost any other major SaaS app that you can hire to customize the app based on public APIs. I can’t imagine choosing any mission critical SaaS app without publicly documented APIs
That introduces a level of indirection between "what I want" and what gets built. A workflow like the OP just has less friction. SaaS platforms would want to provide more stable accessible APIs if it becomes a popular model, because users would find it more usable.
these embeddable UI could be a direct ask on how users want a workflow, the SaaS vendors can distribute the embeddable UI and see if it clicks with a lot of users. Would push them to create a stable API
Surprised this is your take coming from a UX designer. You think a straight path for every user to add their feature ideas results in a good UX?
edit: reading further into this, the idea is perhaps that users vibe-code their own distinct UX with everything valuable to them. That's not a bad take, but even in that world, I wouldn't think UX and product disciplines become exposed for having no value at all.
My take in this (ironic) comment was just "no feature is free", which I don't think should be odd coming from a UX designer!
> the idea is perhaps that users vibe-code their own distinct UX with everything valuable to them
I do find this interesting. I work on a complex business operations and reporting platform and every facility has their own lil quirks. More control in their hands would let them smooth out their workflows while still relying on the foundational work our platform does.
Ah, I didn't register the sarcasm. Typical HN, it's probably why you're downvoted.
Yes, today's HN session has me nerd-sniped about what the future of product development looks like. I've been thinking how mock-to-prototype is just too slow when engineers can ship so much so fast. Eng needs design direction especially when it's too easy to "solve design" with tailwind components and "You're a designer from a top saas company" prompts.
But what if the new UX is less visual-first and more IA, primitives and well structured object models... now that has me thinking.
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