The solutions you build to help other people can be described in terms of form, fit, and function.
Form is what the solution looks like: a revolving belt, glass bent into a particular shape, an app.
Fit is how well the form meets someone’s needs from their perspective (this might be worth repeating twice).
Function is the action that the solution is intended to perform to meet a need: running for physical fitness, holding drinking water for hydration, facilitating the acquisition of desired goods and services.
Generosity without consideration for form, fit, and function creates the risk of not making an impact. The PlayPump, a water-pumping technology that was backed by millions of dollars in charitable donations but ended up failing due to a lack of consideration for form, fit, and function is a perfect cautionary tale for this.
To the extent that generosity is motivated by a desire to help, it’s important that form, fit, and function are considered in addition to your desire to give in order to maximize your ability to help the people you aim to serve.
When obsessing over the form we try to fit the context to match the form... which results in an artificial function (usually unsustainable) and a poor fit.
The writer of ShapeUp often uses Christopher Alexander's terms for this when designing web applications. Form = what you described. Context = the environment into which the form fits into (the problem space and the stakeholders). Goodness-of-fit = how well does the form address the context. This will include the function.
The argument is that understanding of the context driving the form is a much better approach to achieving goodness of fit than thinking that your form can be so powerful to drive the context.
something to ponder on... lol
Of course now I'm kind of at a loss with using these terms because I can't forget
I cling onto that past form only because I've had nostalgic attachments to it. And also because the cost of imagination is high in terms of cognitive effort lol
Yes community platforms in general are a mostly solved problem. But what we're trying to do is not a community platform but a community project specified at a particular community!
The difference would be the former being equivalent to building a community platform software like DEV.to vs building a community (either with something like Dev.to or bespoke like we are doing).
Another parallel to this would be the difference between working on Wordpress' core and building either wordpress sites or a bespoke blog.