Goblin's Law of Whimsy

https://blog.goblinapp.com/goblins-law-of-whimsy/

by herbertl • 4 years ago

34 25 4 years ago

blog.goblinapp.com

dwohnitmok2• 4 years ago

It's tricky. Too much of this and it comes off as inauthentic and a company "trying too hard." Anecdotally I feel like this is a complaint that comes up from time to time on HN, but I can't find any examples at the moment. This is especially the case if all companies in the industry start doing this. See for example how many company products now have emojis splashed everywhere.

ChrisMarshallNY2• 4 years ago

Slack does it, when you clear out your unreads.

    All clear.

    Everything’s sorted!
    Let’s start something new.

    You’re all read.
    Here’s a pony.

    There! Caught up.
    Set your mind to something new.

    All done.
    The future is yours.

    Done and done.

    All done.
    The world is your oyster.

etc.

Salesforce is not a small company, and not one known for whimsy.

mkaic• 4 years ago

I think this is actually a fascinating difference between the cultures surrounding Slack and Discord. Both use this language—in fact, Discord uses it much more liberally, sprinkling all sorts of silly things around the UI—but because Discord is meant to be casual, it doesn't come across as cringey like it does in Slack.

There's lots of little details about Discord that make this work, too, from the layperson-readable changelogs written with an informal, friendly tone, to the Discord YouTube channel, which from what I can tell is basically just Discord paying some young people to do whatever they want to transparently market the product to Gen Z in a genuine, non-patronizing way.

I'm of the opinion that Discord has a much better user experience than Slack, and the only reasons I don't campaign to switch my lab over to it are:

a.) Slack has entrenchment/status-quo advantage, and

b.) Slack says it's "for professionals" while Discord targets "normal people", and heaven forbid we not use the product with "professional" stamped on it in our highly "professional" workspace!

TL;DR: I wish Discord would launch a marketing campaign targeted at middle managers saying "professionals use Discord too", I'm pretty sick of Slack at this point.

LawTalkingGuy• 4 years ago

Slack is an acquisition, right? Did the whimsy come before or after?

dwohnitmok2• 4 years ago

I'm not sure if you were trying to provide an example, but if you were, I was trying to find an example where someone complains about the whimsy in a product, but it looks like you kind of elicited one in a reply to your comment, so ha yeah I guess that counts.

nicbou3• 4 years ago

I'm fine with boring-looking internet. Usually, websites are means to an end. The content or the functionality is what matters. I end up reading a lot of websites with Pocket or Firefox's reader mode.

Perhaps it's because a lot of the whimsy feels insincere, or comes at the wrong moment. Perhaps it's because I value self-effacing tools. Either way, I'm okay with boring pages.

throw10920• 4 years ago

You got it, boring internet is good. Branding, goofiness distract from the substance. If I go to Slack I want to get work done, and I'd rather that the devs focus their efforts on improving performance and not adding more tiny distractions to my day. If I want fun, I'll go to Reddit, which does "fun" way better than Slack ever will.

After the Slack devs finish making their product as performant as a 90's chat app, then they can start adding in silly things. Until then, the "whimsy" just makes me more frustrated at their trash product.

meheleventyone• 4 years ago

This kinda feels like there needs to be some self-reflection. From the article:

For me, the whimsy trend all began with Flow Club. Their tagline is "Feel good getting work done" – that is so against modern hustle culture and American workplace vibes that it's almost jolting.

To me this sounds more like a coping mechanism as are all the other productivity err.. “enhancements” mentioned. If only we made work more jazz hands it’d be better rather than improving the material conditions it’s conducted under.

Similar to gamification it’s taking the wrong lessons.

morelisp2• 4 years ago

"Feel good getting work done" is the overwhelmingly dominant modern hustle culture vibe. But why self-reflect when your flow group will applaud instead?

When you refresh the page, your Hype Goblin has a new message for you.

I want off.

xracy• 4 years ago

We at Strex Corp believe that you should be at your most productive, and smiling helps that. Please smile while you work. And come on down to the company picnic so we can be more productive.

twic2• 4 years ago

Their tagline is "Feel good getting work done" – that is so against modern hustle culture and American workplace vibes that it's almost jolting.

No, this is perfectly resonant with modern American workplace vibes. Being against modern American workplace vibes would be Slack Off And Steal Office Supplies Club.

wwilim• 4 years ago

I just did a powerpoint about how we should avoid integration hell in a project by releasing early. The timeline only had "now", "God only knows when" and "much earlier than God only knows when". There was an architecture diagram with devil emojis bouncing on each arrow. I also had two consecutive slides which were fullscreen memes of Beelzeboss going on and on how every service Jack Black makes needs CI/CD, a dashboard, Correlation IDs, auth, and it all takes time

Zababa• 4 years ago

One thing that I don't really like is when people take care of the whimsical before taking care of the basics, good design, good UX, properly-tested software, good docs and good support.

For example, on this page, the links, the first quote and the image captions don't respect the minimum contrast rules for accessibility. Lots of images don't have an alternative text. Image captions are right-aligned, which could be a style thing, but looks weird. On the good side of things, the performance is good, 95 according to Lighthouse.

The article seems to agree with me, as Henry, the vacuum, is better on a technical level than the vacuum it replaced. When people are using a website, they are trying to do something. I get frustrated by tools that get in my way.

I also think that different people have different degrees of tolerance/liking of whimsical. Flow Club or the Hype Goblin don't resonate with me at all, they alienate me.

My personal preference is simple and clean-looking design, like for example https://www.gov.uk/. It's not cold, but it also doesn't try to pretend that it's a good friend when we don't even know each other.

One company that, to me, does it well, is Beeminder. I think the way I would put it is that through all their documentation, branding and interactions, I feel like they have a genuine intent of building a win/win relationship with me. Nobody is trying to abuse the situation for their own gain, there are clear rules that we both respect, they get some value thanks to me, and I get some value thanks to them. It feels like being in the prisoner's dilemma with someone and knowing they'll cooperate.

I'm not affiliated with them, just a happy client.

nicbou3• 4 years ago

Gov.uk and Nhs.uk are excellent examples. Their plain design is the result of a lot of user research, while their target demographic is the entire population of a country.

Their content guidelines are publicly available, and well worth a read.

Just look up any health condition, and see how the straightforward design and plain language content make you feel.

It's a huge source of inspiration for my own website about German bureaucracy.

rexpop• 4 years ago

A principled objection to the infantilization of users might start with 2016's "Babysitters Club"[0]:

we tend to read cuteness as evidence of “restricted agency” rather than as evidence of concealed and significant power.
the childlikeness makes sense when you consider that Yelp depends on us to write reviews, and therefore must, like a fun mom, make chores feel fun too.

0. https://reallifemag.com/the-babysitters-club/

Goblin's Law of Whimsy

Related Stories