Product rule of thumb: elegant heuristics.

· Bits and Bobs 11/4/25
  • Product rule of thumb: elegant heuristics.
    • If there's an action 95% of users will do, simply do it automatically.
    • Especially if it's easy to undo, or easy to add one more button for.
    • If the heuristic can be explained in a single sentence, and it handles a very large swath of user behavior, it's worth the extra product complexity.
    • For example, Zoom has a complex thicket of options for whether you should be muted when you dial into a call.
      • It often doesn't do what you want.
      • Google Meet has an elegant heuristic: if you're the sixth or higher person to dial in, you're muted.
    • Here are a few elegant heuristics I wish Peloton bikes would implement:
      • In a stack of classes, warm ups going before normal classes going before cool downs.
        • Today if you add a class to a stack, it always goes to the end of the stack, even if you added a normal class and then a warm-up.
        • There should be three stacks, in order: warm-ups, everything else, cool-downs.
        • Adding an item would append it to the appropriate stack.
        • Of course, you could override that default order if you wanted.
      • In a stack of classes, have a fast-forward button when finishing a class.
        • The fast forward button would advance to the next class, start it, and also skip the 1 minute pre-warmup, putting you right to the beginning of the new class.

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