[HN Gopher] Muse Retrospective * Adam Wiggins
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Muse Retrospective * Adam Wiggins
Author : hboon
Score : 24 points
Date : 2024-02-17 11:28 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (adamwiggins.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (adamwiggins.com)
| felipefar wrote:
| As someone who's also developing a product in the tools for
| thinking space, and going through the ordeal of finding PMF, I
| can empathize with Muse's journey.
|
| Even though the project didn't pan out the way they initially
| planned, they handled the inevitable ups and downs with a lot of
| skill. You can see the amount of thinking that went into their
| software. Even though this is not an explicit takeaway of the
| article, I believe that the biggest lesson is to aspire to the
| same level of craftsmanship that they've shown.
| antidnan wrote:
| So much good stuff in here. Inventing a new document type is
| really really hard. Agree wholeheartedly with those takeaways.
|
| Fascinating conclusion that a TFT like Muse was a ZIRP.
|
| Glad to see they're continuing in a sustainable fashion!
| pilgrim0 wrote:
| Just giving my own perspective. It was hard for me to come across
| muse within my search for tools in that space, something about
| SEO was not working. Never had a single ad or organic content hit
| my timeline in social networks. I actively scraped the depths of
| YouTube to find their tutorial vids. Those videos had an
| synthetic and corporate appeal. I was expecting something fully
| geared towards students and creatives. The Teams integration made
| no sense to me. My GF does a lot of colored diagrams and drawings
| while she studies, and she does so in Google Docs! I'm sure
| there're many people like her that never heard of the product. I
| don't think they marketed to the ideal niche and for enough time.
| It seems to me like there's huge value yet to be extracted. Being
| featured in the App Store, product hunt, etc may give an illusion
| of achievement but it means absolutely nothing because regular
| end-users never see this stuff! So, a very serious branding and
| marketing problem is my diagnosis. Perhaps it was confined to a
| northern enterprisey-techy-bubble the whole time? I personally
| think it would be a hit on among LATAM universities and schools.
| rchaud wrote:
| Agreed, they did not seem to do much in terms of
| discoverability. There was simply more awareness in the public
| for things like Obsidian, Logseq, Notion, or Excalidraw.
|
| That they were an iPad/Mac only app likely limited their
| appeal.
| pilgrim0 wrote:
| Yep. I think they had enough peer validation from their own
| bubble and got too comfortable and biased with their
| marketing. I see this happening a lot in tech circles. The
| world at large has definitely not seen muse and what it can
| do. I think the product is great!
| rchaud wrote:
| I can say that the Muse podcast (which was about building
| software in general, not just their app) was one of the most
| refreshing things I'd heard. Great interviews with other product
| builders, and lots of examples that get into the weeds of what
| makes software fast, fun to use, or easy to build/deploy.
|
| What was surprising was that there was almost no mention of Muse
| (the app) outside of this podcast, on the general web. Nothing on
| HN from what I could tell. Their Twitter account was very quiet,
| plus I never saw organic posts from people who were using the
| tool.
|
| Which is surprising because the "Tools for Thought" space is
| chock-full of people online posting screenshots, knowledge graphs
| and talking about features.
|
| It's crazy that there was more chatter about OneNote (the most
| boring free-form organization tool there is) and almost nothing
| about Muse.
| silentsanctuary wrote:
| I loved/love Muse and was a happily paid user (still am).
|
| It ticked a lot of boxes that no other tool did or does, and for
| that reason it retains a place in my toolbox of thinking/ideation
| instruments.
|
| But there are a couple of fairly minor things (compared to the
| scope of the rest of the project) that stop me from reaching for
| it more often. They come down to factors that make the tool feel
| satisfying to use, and chief among them: does using this tool
| produce aesthetically pleasing output that I want to keep looking
| at, and want to make more of?
|
| For me the answer was no, or at least I can get better results
| elsewhere.
|
| One problem was the limited colour support. I understand their
| reasoning behind this - too much customisability can lead you to
| fiddle with your tools, so by limiting your options, you have no
| choice but to start putting pencil to (virtual) paper and get
| your work done. But I didn't like the colours, so the end result
| didn't look as nice to me as output I made elsewhere, which
| discouraged me from using it.
|
| Another problem was handwriting ink. My digital handwriting
| always seems to look worse than on real paper and ink but for
| whatever reason, Muse is one of the least forgiving tools in this
| regard. Looking at my handwriting in my Muse boards made me want
| to use the text tools instead, which then meant I was giving up
| the benefits of mixing freeform note taking with sketching, and
| the other benefits that brings one to Muse in the first place.
|
| It's hard for me to shake the feeling that with a little more
| attention to some otherwise neglected lower hanging fruit, the
| retention of a whole class of users would be rather significantly
| boosted. But at the same time, it's hard for me to imagine that
| my idle thoughts on the matter would bear out more successfully
| than those of the dedicated user research team originally behind
| the project.
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