Designers get this wrong all the time.
New tech doesn't need opinionated design. We talk about Design as if it's one thing, but really it supports different purposes depending on a category's maturity.
Early tech = "Undesigned" (open & flexible)
Growth tech = Design to scale (universal & generic)
Mature tech = Design to differentiate (opinionated)
i have one upsetting observation: all the beautifully designed AI tools we’ve seen so far (dot, humane, cobot) were basically dead on arrival, while complex, highly technical products (claude code, openclaw) gain mass adoption in seconds.
we're definitely missing something.