IMHO it is all part of the documentation to enable people to up ramp.

What is missing from most documentation is simple Use Case.

You need a video / tutorial that is JUST 'Wheres the starting point'

Then one addressing what you expect most people to do.

Each tutorial should be no more than 5 minutes, ideally 1 minute. (hmm sounds like breaking up your code into manageable parts)

Making it easy to find the tutorials is important.

If one tutorial needs another, then point to it. Do not just say "before you start make sure you understand quantum theory"

You know this is like the 'one man band' where the person is playing a dozen instruments. "I do not understand, you know how to read music, why don't you strap this on and perform?" Er I don't know how to play the xylophone.

Ok let me teach you each instrument.... then we can put it together. Here is the symbol, here is the harmonica, we will just integrate these 2.

Hope this helps.

    > What is missing from most documentation is simple Use Case.

    > All the calendar, task, website stuff ended up dying away, because what we really needed was a...

I'm personally not a fan of these "super" apps that lock you into vertical silos. I noticed that Google Chrome on Windows dropped the ability to share a link via an external email program, preferring you to use GMail. Microsoft Edge is the same - wants you to log into your Microsoft account. Separating apps by function is freedom.

As a user, yes, as a developer no.

If it helps: As a user I don't want an onboarding process, I want to be able to start with the features I need. The I can later migrate more and more stuff into your app. If it's an all or nothing deal, then it's to much work to get started.

I think this is also why we see people jump on "simply solution for X", then X grows and users adopt the new features in slow progression. At some point it become to much for new users, and they start searching for "simply solution for X" and the cycle restarts.

I think the key is the mental model, as you said.

One danger is trying to reduce multiple different concepts to a single concept. For example, instead of thinking about an email, a task, and a calendar entry as separate things, we could just have a generic concept like an "entity" which has attributes like a time/date or a list of people or a body of text.

Programmers love that kind of abstraction. We love having a few simple pieces that we can combine in various ways to get what we want. That is literally what we do when we program.

Normal people, though, hate that. Instead of giving them a tool to get their job done, we've given them a puzzle. They need to figure out how to combine the pieces. And what's obvious to us, is absolutely not obvious to them.

I haven't seen your UX, so I don't know if this is an issue, but I would focus on the mental model. As a user, what do I need to know to start using the tool? If that's more than a single sentence (to start) then you're in trouble.

I'm always happy to brainstorm with people. Hit me up if you want to chat sometime.

    > Normal people, though, hate that. Instead of giving them a tool to get their job done, we've given them a puzzle

I've only used a few integrated productivity apps and generally found them less useful to me than less integrated ones. The clearest comparison is Notion which has so many ways to store information that I'm always misplacing knowledge. The places where I can effectively store and retrieve knowledge is Google Drive/Docs or GitHub projects/issues/PRs.

I tend to also not like individual parts of an integrated productivity tool but everyone is expected to use most everything. Basically the bundled MS Teams problem. Integrated productivity isn't selling you the best of each, they're selling you the best integration of maybe-not-your-favorite tools. Just my hot take, YMMV.

My issue with all-in-one apps if they have a weak spot, the whole model breaks down. Outlook is an app that bundles email, calendar, contacts, notes, and to dos. The notes are trash and I never could cobble together a to do workflow in Outlook that made sense to me. So I have to go find separate apps for those functions, and then use Outlook for email and calendar while ignoring those other parts. This means I also need to actively ignore features to make sure I don’t do something that will start filling up the to do section that I’m never looking at. The end result is an app that feels bloated and trying to push features on me I don’t want.

With separate applications it is trivial to swap out one part of it. I use Apple Mail, Calendar, Contacts, Notes, and Reminders… but sometimes I want to use Obsidian instead of Apple Notes, or OmniFocus instead of Reminders. This is no big deal. The workflow doesn’t breakdown because of a single app being swapped.

The other benefit of separate apps is being able to work in multiple windows. Many all-in-one apps make it difficult to see different sections at one time. If it’s not an officially supported use-case, you’re out of luck. With separate apps, I can have whatever I want up and visible in any view I want.

> Have you built or used something that people love after trying it, but struggle to understand before trying it?

I think two things help here.

1. Even if there are advanced features, the application should be simple to pickup and use for someone who doesn’t know anything about those features, for basic functionality. Apple Notes is a good example of this. At its core, you can open it and jot things down and make new notes if you want. As you need more features they are there… better organization, formatting, note linking, various import methods, voice transcription, tables, etc. Some of this may be discovered organically and some of it may be learned by actively going to look for it. Obsidian also does this decently well.

2. Good documentation. When people do want to know more and step up their workflow, they need good resources. Text and video is good here. Not only a feature list and how to use said features, but also real-world examples to give people ideas of how the features can be used to make their life better/easier. At launch, you need to do this all yourself. Over time, if it’s popular, some creators might help with making content to show various use cases, features, etc. However, I’m still of the opinion that the people behind the app should have the best and most complete source of this stuff. I’m always frustrated when the vendor documentation is really bad or non-existent and I have to hope that some random person figured out what I need and shared it somewhere. There are a lot of popular apps like this, and I’m not sure how they ever got off the ground.

In a non-tech area, Ryder Carroll does a good job of this with the Bullet Journal. When you look at stuff random “influencers” make, it’s insane, more arts and crafts than productivity tool. When you go to the source of the guy who created it, he makes a ton of content and it’s all very pragmatic and down to earth. I think this is invaluable for making sure the influencers don’t turn people off by only showing over-complicated abominations. People making videos about Obsidian do this a lot as zettelkasten purists.