You Need to Bring People Along - by Shane McGraw

Integrals

SubscribeSign in

You Need to Bring People Along<br>On the merits of making clear the telos of your work.

Shane McGraw<br>Jun 05, 2026

Share

Westward mural, Coit Tower<br>I recently published a small, web-based project that made perfect sense to me. The domain is interesting, the solution is elegant, and, if I may be so bold, it doesn’t look too bad either. But then —to my utter surprise and chagrin— when I finally plucked up the courage to show it to my friend (someone who, I’d suppose, has a mind similar to my own) his response was the dreaded: “What is this?”.<br>Granted, he was not being overly critical, just genuine. He didn’t understand it, what it was for, or why he’d use it.

Subscribe

Which is pretty bad news for me, especially for a project that becomes more valuable with every additional user. And right then I realized it.<br>It is not enough to drop a link over a wall, either via text or blog, and expect people to pick it up and run with it, at least not the first time (and especially when it’s not something they’ve seen the likes of before). It’s like pointing a hiker, looking to summit some distant mountain, to the peak without any further instructions (much less a map). People need the map; they need an outline of a way to think about what you’ve built, and perhaps more deeply, they need to understand a bit more about how your way of seeing the world led you to build this.<br>Especially if they’re going to care. And they won’t, at least not automatically. This is perhaps a less cynical take than the classic “you can’t tell people anything”1 , but it is related. To get people to engage with —let alone care about— something you’ve poured your time and energy into, to provide them with a glimpse of the value you see in it, you have to bring them along. You have to show them what exactly you are solving and why it matters.<br>In other words, for any project or product, especially in the digital space, you should ask yourself the “so what?” question, and spend some time reflecting on it. What will this matter to someone who doesn’t wake up thinking about this problem? Who hasn’t been noodling on the domain, nor its intricacies? What difference will it make in the average person’s life? Your works cannot exist as esoterica if you want them to be widely used (much less be received with fortune and glory).<br>So instead I offer a simple encouragement: write a brief, or an essay, or something2, to accompany what you’re building. Throw a link at the login page, or in the “about” section, or at the footer. We tend to think that this is the product itself (“if only someone would just use it, then they would understand!” is an ever-present siren song), but, at least for v0, it is hardly ever the case. It’s easy to default —perhaps bound up in the narcissism of small differences— to expect that everyone drop what they’re doing and attend to something, simply because you have been attending to it, but that road likely leads to the lonely wilderness.3<br>Instead, you need to bring people along.

Subscribe

1https://habitatchronicles.com/2004/04/you-cant-tell-people-anything

2It can be anything, like this!

3Which isn’t a bad place; it’s just not a place most wish to go for things like this.

Share

Discussion about this post<br>CommentsRestacks

TopLatest

No posts

Ready for more?

Subscribe

© 2026 Shane McGraw · Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice<br>Start your SubstackGet the app<br>Substack is the home for great culture

This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. Please turn on JavaScript or unblock scripts