Thoughts on Swedish goggles and product bullshit creep-in
It had been several months since I last went to the swimming pool, when the pandemic hit it wasn’t clear if that was a horrible spot to be in, but now it seems it’s safe enough to go for a swim.
As a result of my goggles being left for months in my locker, probably a little wet from the last time I used them (one of those times you are not aware that was the last time you were gonna do something in a long time…), the string the goes around the head rot and as soon as I tried to put them on it snapped. I tried to make a knot to be able to wear them, but it was useless, the thing kept snapping as soon as I put them on. I ended up not being able to swim that day (I’m not one of those people that can swim without goggles).
The goggles I was using before the pandemic were one of those Swedish minimalistic, no rubber, no features, no bullshit ones. I tried a couple of other goggles when I took up swimming a few years ago before getting to these, but all the “stuff” on the goggles, the rubber, the adjustable bits, the funky cords, the advanced polarising anti-fog glass kept being a nuisance. One day I remembered that as a kid I heard of “the Swedish goggles” and thought they were lame as they didn’t have any cool shiny things, but now as a grown up, the simplicity of them sounded appealing. I got a pair and surprise surprise, those simplistic goggles were superior to all the fancy ones I’d been trying.
So I need a replacement, no biggie, I went on Amazon and searched for Swedish goggles (yes, I should have just bought a replacement string but that’s another subject all together) and saw that there were plenty knock offs by big brands but for some reason the original ones by Malmsten AB weren’t there to be bought; “this are hyper simplistic goggles, any knock off will do” I (mistakenly) thought to myself. When I got the new ones from a big brand, I noticed a couple of small differences to the original ones, there was some rubber padding around the plastic eye pieces and the nose bridge that holds them together was hard plastic instead of a piece of cord inside a rubber tube. Interestingly, they did include a string-rubber thing that the original ones had, and there were replacement for the plastic nose bridge in several sizes included as well.
I went into the pool not thinking too much about having new goggles, probably I’d just have to adjust the head cord a bit right? Wrong.
As it turns out, I couldn’t get the new goggles to fit without leaking in water, I adjusted the cord and tried different positions on the back of the head but I couldn’t get them to work for me. To be clear they were usable, but they just weren’t working flawlessly as the original, simpler ones I was using before. This didn’t cross my mind as a possibility before trying them, after all, what could be the harm of a little extra rubber padding around the eyes, or the plastic nose bridge giving them a bit more structure? As it turns out, the answers was, a lot.
As I was swimming with just enough water leaking in to make the goggles a little uncomfortable, but still usable, I kept imagining the meeting when someone said “let’s add some padding, no one will complain about a little padding”, and everyone else in the room nodding along; or “let’s include the cord instead of the plastic nose thingy as an option, if anyone wants to use it, they can just replace the plastic thing for the cord right?” and then everyone nodded along. But that’s not how great products are built, and let’s be clear, the Malmsten AB original Swedish goggles are a remarkable product in their elegant simplicity and timeless effectivity; “probably the worlds most copied swim goggles” as the company once stated.
A truly great product has to be the accumulation of tiny decisions of which the product team is strongly convinced of, as opposed the accumulation of “what’s the harm?”-bullshit product features. The bar for the former is way higher than for the latter, it creates a lot less conflict to go along with other people’s harmless ideas in contrast to questioning them with rigor and it’s way easier to give the multiple bullshit choices without guiding them to what you, as a product team, think is the best option for them. It’s hard to be critical of ideas, and it’s scary to be opinionated about what is best for users, it sure is nicer to go along with any decent idea, and it’s more straightforward to just let the user decide what they want, but that’s not how great products are built.
This Swedish goggles debacle reminded me of the Antoine de Saint-Exupéry quote, “Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away” in how a better product was built by avoiding both bullshit features and unnecessary choices left to the user. Now I’ve replaced the head band in my old goggles with the one from the new ones, and I’m again enjoying their simplicity and how they just work.
Simplicity in this sense is a guiding principle that we have at Sofía in our quest to improve how people take care of their health. If you’d like to build products with this kind of simplicity in mind, we’re hiring.
