Keep It Fast
Speed is a feature. Maybe the most important one. If users have time to wonder what's going on, your software is broken.
A major insurance firm we worked with had a backlog of online claims that customers started and never finished, leaving money on the table. Uploading receipts was so slow it felt broken: endless spinners and stalled progress bars. If users have time to wonder what's going on, your software is broken. You have to keep it fast.
In this episode, we get into:
- How speed rot sets in, and why "it's only one time" isn't an excuse
- What AI chatbots, Netlify, and SimCity teach us about making a wait feel shorter
- Why you should stop saying "tech debt" and show the slowness instead
- What happened when Gina admitted to running an ad blocker in an all-hands meeting at an ad-supported startup
- When slow is okay: prototypes and powerful features
