Hi, I’m Aastha, and welcome to my world of words. I write about education, human creativity, and any other words I bob my head to. I also write a longevity and health newsletter called Live Longer World.
Most successful products and tools make it easier for the customer to do a particular activity. They enable ease. These tools can be broadly categorized into 2 buckets:
Tools that make it easier for you to do a particular activity (removing the friction to do a particular activity when the desire to do the activity exists).
Tools that make it easier for you to do activities you don’t want to do but have to (i.e. laundry). This way you can focus more on what you want to do.
Another, perhaps simpler way of classifying these tools is through the lens of time.
The first category of tools are tools that enable you to spend more time doing an activity.
The second category is tools that enable you to spend less time doing an activity.
Category 1: Tools that enable you to spend more time doing an activity
Most successful products these days fall into this category. They’re essentially solving the following problem: How do I enable people to spend more time doing activity X?
This is in cases when the desire to do activity X already exists, but the friction to do it is high. Good products remove the friction and make it easier for you to do the activity. Examples:
Calm Meditation App: Enabling people to meditate more.
Healthy, tasty food products: Enabling people to eat healthy.
Fitness apps / trainer: Enabling people to workout more.
Substack: Enable more people to write online.
AI coding: Enable more people to code.
A lot of health products fall into this category. Everyone wants to be healthy, but sometimes it’s too much work for people. Spend time cooking healthy meals vs. buying cheap pizza? How do I even get started with my workouts? Meditating is hard, I don’t know how to begin, and so on. Good health products make it easier for people to be healthy.
Category 1 tools are also capable of expanding the market of users
These tools not only enable people to do the activity more, but they also enable more people to do the activity. In other words, they grow the market of people doing the activity. So they serve 2 functions:
Enable people to do the activity more.
Enable more people to do the activity.
For example, Calm meditation app not only enabled meditators to meditate more, but it also allowed non-meditators to begin meditating.
Category 2: Tools that enable you to spend less time doing an activity
These are tools that make it easier for you to do your chores. They are solving the following problem: How do I enable people to spend less time doing activity X?
Notice the difference in the problem question. These tools don’t necessarily expand the market of people doing the activity. They’re more solving for reducing the time spent on the activity. Most of these tools fall in the category of solving everyday problems:
Laundry machines: Save you time such that you don’t have to wash clothes by hand.
Dishwashers: Same as above but for dishes.
TurboTax / Online tax sites: Save you time doing your taxes.
Uber: Allow you to not have to drive, giving you back some time in the car.
Superhuman: Enables you to send emails faster (most people don’t like email!)
Voice mode for emails allows for this too.
Meal delivery services: Deliver food to you with ease for those who don’t enjoy cooking.
Grocery apps: Save you a ton of time not having to peruse grocery aisles for food.
Robots: Waiting for when robots will fold my laundry and run the dishwasher!
AI coding: Allow developers to let AI do the tedious parts of coding.
There is overlap between the 2 categories
The 2 categories are not exclusive. There is overlap depending on the customer and the need. For example, vibe / AI coding may fall into category 2 for a developer where it saves them time by automating the tedious parts of coding. But it will fall into category 1 for a non-developer where it expands the market by making it easier for more people to “code” their ideas into existence.
It’s also interesting to see tools that start off in one category and because they are so good at removing friction that they quickly enter the other category too. For example, Figma started off in category 2, making it possible for designers to spend less time on the tedious parts of design. But because it made it so much simpler to design, it was adopted by non-designers too who sometimes started doing design mock-ups themselves.
Shopify is another good example. It started off in category 2 enabling drop-shippers to spend less time on the administrative work. Over time, it veered into category 1 too by enabling more people to do drop-shipping!
Enabling ease (less of the activity) → More of the activity
One of the best scenarios for a product is when the product initially makes it easy for someone to do an activity. And the enablement of ease means that the person wants to do more and more of the activity. The tool drives momentum.
Substack is a good example here. Initially, Substack might make it easier for someone to write online. But when this person begins to write online and gets good feedback, they want to write more and more, thereby boosting Substack’s usage and reader base!
Cooking devices like Instapot might also be a good example here. At first, for someone who doesn’t like to cook, they enable the person to do it faster. And then this same person might start to enjoy cooking and use Instapot more and more!
Closing thoughts & Tools to think better
Next time you are launching a product, it might be helpful to ask the question: How is this product going to make someone’s life easier? It will help frame the problem you’re solving for and who the customer is.
Say you’re trying to push a cool social app where you think someone should use it because it will be good for them, it might be time to re-think not from the perspective of whether you think it will be good for them, but if it will make an activity simple for them.
I’ve also been thinking of “tools that allow you to think better.” In a sense many of the tools mentioned above help one think better in an indirect way. My dishwasher gives me time back to think. But what are some tools that directly allow you think better? Substack could be one since it enables me to write more - writing is thinking. My Daylight computer is another one - it lets me read outside which sparks better thinking. What else?
Curious to hear your thoughts on this framing of two types of tools that enable ease.