Opinionated Design: Great Products Take a Stand

In 2007, Apple unveiled the iPhone to a room full of skeptics. The device had no physical keyboard. A decision that seemed insane when BlackBerry dominated the market and experts insisted people needed tactile buttons to type.¹ The original iPhone keyboard was slow, inaccurate, and frustrating. But Apple had made an opinionated bet: touchscreens would eventually enable interfaces that could change based on context, creating phones that were more computer than communication device.

Apple was not immediately seen as correct, but they were willing to stick to their direction. While BlackBerry perfected physical keyboards, Apple spent years refining software keyboards and touch interfaces. By 2012, BlackBerry's market share had collapsed.² The iPhone succeeded because the best opinionated design combines strong principles with disciplined execution.

The Problem with Design by Committee

Most organizations approach design like a democracy. Stakeholders vote. User research gets averaged. Features get added to satisfy different constituencies. The result? Products that offend no one and delight no one.

When you try to please everyone equally, you optimize for the lowest common denominator rather than creating something genuinely valuable for specific users. Market research compounds this when misapplied. Data can tell you what people have done before, but breakthrough design often requires understanding what people need before they can articulate it. The fear of alienating some users paralyzes teams into building forgettable products. Being loved by some beats being tolerated by all.

What Makes Design Opinionated

Successful opinionated design starts with strong principles grounded in user insights, not designer preferences. Apple's touchscreen bet wasn't arbitrary. It was based on their belief that people wanted phones capable of running rich applications.

The best opinionated products are principled, not rigid. They maintain strategic direction while adapting tactics based on evidence. Most importantly, sustainable opinionated design requires "strategic patience" and a willingness to iterate through failures while maintaining core principles. Many opinionated bets take years to prove their value.

Four Examples of Success

The iPhone: Persistence Through Iteration

Apple's touchscreen bet succeeded because they combined strong principles with relentless improvement. The original keyboard was objectively worse than BlackBerry's, but Apple had chosen a path that enabled continuous software updates and interface innovations that physical keyboards couldn't match.³

BlackBerry was trapped by their own success—physical keyboards were already optimized. Apple's "inferior" solution had unlimited upgrade potential.

The High Line: Vision Plus Pragmatic Politics

New York's High Line succeeded through clear vision and pragmatic compromise. Joshua David and Robert Hammond were opinionated about preserving industrial heritage while adapting implementation based on community feedback.⁴

The project was principled about its core belief—that industrial infrastructure could become beautiful public space—while evolving to address safety, gentrification, and cost concerns. It now attracts 8 million visitors annually and has inspired 100+ similar projects worldwide.⁵

Singapore's HDB: Bold Vision with Trade-offs

Singapore's decision to house 80% of its population in government-built apartments was perhaps the most opinionated urban policy of the 20th century. Rather than rental housing, they created a "nation of homeowners" through 99-year leases.⁶

The policy achieved its primary goals: 90% of HDB residents own their homes, creating social stability. But it also created new challenges—wealth inequality and approaching lease expirations.⁷ Singapore's housing policy demonstrates both the power and risks of opinionated government design.

Copenhagen: Evolution Within Principles

Copenhagen's cycling transformation wasn't a single decision but decades of consistent choices guided by core principles. Starting with the 1970s oil crisis, they prioritized human-scale transportation over automobile convenience.⁸

The approach evolved from simple painted bike lanes to protected cycle tracks and bicycle bridges. Each iteration was informed by data while maintaining strategic direction. Today, 49% of Copenhagen commutes happen by bike, generating €91 million in annual healthcare savings.⁹

When Opinionated Design Fails

Not every strong opinion creates value. Opinionated design fails when:

• Opinions are based on designer preferences rather than user insights. Google Glass was opinionated about wearable computing but failed to solve real problems.¹⁰
• Pride prevents course correction. Windows Phone maintained its tile interface even as users preferred iOS and Android paradigms.¹¹
• Market timing is wrong. The Segway was opinionated about personal transportation but failed to account for infrastructure and cultural adoption challenges.¹²

The key skill isn't being opinionated, it's being opinionated about the right things.

Good Judgment

Successful opinionated design requires distinguishing between principles worth defending and preferences worth abandoning. Ask:

What problem are we solving that others ignore? Great opinionated design often addresses needs that seem specialized but prove broadly important.

What future are we building toward? Strong opinions should be about direction, not just current features.

How will we know if we're wrong? Define clear metrics for validating opinionated directions. Stubbornness isn't a strategy.

What can we change without abandoning our principles? Know what's negotiable and what isn't.

Why This Matters Now

In an era of A/B testing and data-driven design, it's tempting to let metrics make every decision. But data can only optimize existing patterns. But this approach won’t create breakthrough innovations.

The most successful products combine strong opinions about strategic direction with rigorous testing of tactical execution. The companies winning today (from Tesla to TikTok to Stripe) all made opinionated design decisions about how their industries could work differently.

Choose Principles Carefully

Great design isn't about being contrarian for its own sake. It's about having good design judgment about value creation and the courage to act on them consistently over time.

Stop trying to please everyone. Start serving specific users exceptionally well. The world has enough adequate products built by consensus. We need more products built with conviction. Products that take principled stands about how the world should work and execute those principles through disciplined iteration.

Remember: the iPhone succeeded not because Apple ignored criticism, but because they were opinionated about the right things and persistent about proving their vision through relentless improvement. That's the difference between stubbornness and strategy.

References

1. Ken Kocienda, Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2018).
2. "BlackBerry's Fall from Grace," BBC News, September 23, 2016, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37447435
3. "The iPhone Keyboard: Make It or Break It," Commoncog Case Library, https://commoncog.com/c/cases/the-iphone-keyboard-make-it-or-break-it/
4. Joshua David and Robert Hammond, High Line: The Inside Story of New York City's Park in the Sky (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011).
5. "The High Line's Biggest Issue—And How Its Creators Are Learning From Their Mistakes," Bloomberg CityLab, February 7, 2017, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-07/the-high-line-and-equity-in-adaptive-reuse
6. "A home for everyone: Singapore's public housing," Singapore Government, https://www.gov.sg/explainers/a-home-for-everyone-singapores-public-housing
7. "The Contradictions of Public Housing in Singapore," New Naratif, October 28, 2024, https://newnaratif.com/housing-in-singapore/
8. "Cycling in Copenhagen," Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_in_Copenhagen
9. "The City of Copenhagen's Bicycle Strategy," Urban Sustainability Exchange, https://use.metropolis.org/case-studies/cycling-in-copenhagen
10. "The Rise and Fall of Google Glass," TechCrunch, January 15, 2015, https://techcrunch.com/2015/01/15/the-rise-and-fall-of-google-glass/
11. "Microsoft Ends Support for Windows Phone," The Verge, July 11, 2017, https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/11/15953594/microsoft-windows-phone-end-support
12. "Whatever Happened to the Segway?" Smithsonian Magazine, January 16, 2015, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/whatever-happened-segway-180953960/