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Notion clicked for me when I realised that everything is a "page with some attributes". Blocks are interesting at the engineering level, but as a user I found I
by rkangel 5y ago
Notion clicked for me when I realised that everything is a "page with some attributes". Blocks are interesting at the engineering level, but as a user I found I was normally thinking at the level of pages.
Each page is some content (optional) with a set of arbitrary attributes of different types, e.g. date, string, number etc. When you create a table and populate it, you are creating a set of pages all of whom have the same attributes and the table is just a view of those pages. You can then create a calendar that's a different way of presenting those same pages. You can also deal with those pages directly and put content in, and reference them from elsewhere.
It's a really simple data model, and it's pretty flexible. We built all our processes on Notion initially and then moved them off when they got to an appropriate scale. I'm glad the API exist now, because then that approach can be incremental rather than a wholesale move.
All the ways of displaying things - tables, calendars etc. are just displaying collections of pages.
- colinplamondon 5y agoThis! The design decision to feel "default-text" is awesome - text is a great foundation for a "custom workspace" product. But, it's only when the bulk of content is in Tables that things get extremely powerful. Once Notion has in-line text references, ala Coda, the sky is really the limit. I think Notion nailed the UX and speed / performance. Even if it's slow compared to Apple Notes, it's lightning fast compared to Coda, where "Documents" are extremely heavy, and relatively isolated. Notion has a clean route towards eating Coda's most powerful functionality ([an incredible charting and formula](https://coda.io/formulas https://coda.io/formulas)). That's the kind of thing that a company as well-financed as Notion can dedicate a team to, and make incredible progress on. Similarly, They can eat Coda's in-line text references, so your text can live-link to information in tables. A matter of resource allocation. Coda, on the other hand, started from an "easier application builder" approach, like Retool for Excel experts. That's brilliant and powerful, but the UX creates a bigger dividing line between consumers and creators. Notion feels enough like a normal word processor that consumers start doing crazy things without realizing it.
- jitl 5y agoThe amount of care I see our users investing in their Notion spaces on Reddit is inspiring. As is seeing Notion show up on my TikTok feed!?
- Artistry121 5y agoWhat about a timeline first interface?