Useful before impressive
A feature should help somebody do a real thing. Engagement, novelty, and platform ambitions are not substitutes for usefulness.
Operating principles
Against enshittification.
There is a familiar pattern in software: the useful thing slowly becomes a mechanism for extracting more from people who already depend on it. We do not want to build that way.
01 · Standard
A simple standard
These are design and operating constraints, not a brand campaign. We will sometimes fall short. When we do, the principles should make the failure easy to name and correct.
Clear enough to inspect
Explain what a product does, how it works, what it costs, what happens to data, and where the limits are. Avoid mysterious machinery when understandable machinery will do.
Your data is not our product
Collect less, keep less, expose less, and never sell user data. Product-specific notices may add details; they should not weaken that baseline.
Leaving must be possible
Data should be exportable in useful forms. A customer should not need a rescue operation to stop using a product.
No artificial deterioration
Do not remove useful features, fill the interface with advertising, or make a product worse to force an upgrade. Improvement should mean improvement for the user.
Prices should make sense
Running a service costs money and durable development takes time. Say so plainly. Do not hide ordinary pricing behind sales theatre when a number can be published.
Maturity is information
Stable, beta, alpha, preview, and concept are not decorations. They should set realistic expectations about reliability, support, and change.
02 · Privacy
The privacy baseline
Ekehöjd does not sell user data — not to advertisers, data brokers, or anybody else.
Personal data should be processed only where it is needed to provide, secure, support, or improve the relevant software, or where the law requires it. Access belongs only to people and systems with a legitimate operational purpose.
03 · Test
The practical test
After thirty seconds, a visitor should understand what the tool is for. After using it, they should still feel that the tool works for them — not the other way around.