When you’re building a tool for people with a huge range of expertise, the trap is designing for the power user and making everyone else feel stupid, or dumbing it down so the experts bounce. The principle I keep landing on: work for the most technical, but default to the simplest. Allow for the variability, don’t create the requirement.
The other half of it is who you’re really building the back end for. A lot of the people using these tools didn’t get into their craft because they love software, they got into it to do the work. So the back office should feel closer to Shopify or Squarespace than to a developer tool: intuitive, powerful when you need it, never intimidating. Powerful underneath, simple on top.
Where’s the line between giving people power and overwhelming them with it?