Disclosure certainty 4/5 debate potential 3/5

Shopify Enforces a Strict 'No Wizard' Onboarding Product Principle

Archie Abrams · Breaking the rules of growth: Why Shopify bans KPIs, optimizes for churn, and prioritizes intuition · Nov 7, 2024 · at 57:18

Archie Abrams (VP of Product and Head of Growth at Shopify) discusses design constraints agreed upon with CEO Tobi Lütke and the Core Product team.

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“We have very specific no wizard principle, but I think that sometimes the tension is Wizards do serve a, can serve a purpose in certain circumstances, and so we've, but we've avoided doing that, but we've always worked to try to make the principles of what a wizard does really well, which is it simplifies the product into something that allows people to have a lower bar to try to work with core to bring that into the actual experience itself.”

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