I never had the chance to speak with a designer or product owner working on Notion, if not very briefly at a meetup. I never could ask them what their thoughts are regarding what they’re building and if they’re only focused on creating a sellable product rather than assessing their creation’s social, cultural, and psychic impact.
The cultish attitude of many Notion power users is often mistaken for brand fidelity: Apple fanboys are out, today Notion is the cool thing. Is that it? Is Notion just like any other trendy software? Or there's something more to it?
The idea I've built over the years is that the company inadvertently stumbled into a conceptual breakthrough that they are just partially aware of. Notion is marketed as a productivity tool and a competitor to Jira, Trello, Confluence, Monday, Microsoft Teams, and so many others. Most of these tools produce a deep hatred over time in their users, while Notion does the opposite: it's an acquired taste that takes a while to fully appreciate. Once you do, it feels like you've invested in something more significant than just software.
It took me years to pinpoint the exact dynamic, but I've finally arrived at some answers that I'd like to share with you today.
Let's start from the beginning. What is new about Notion? I think the distinctive element setting Notion apart from its competitors is what, in other works, I named Fractal Knowledge Model.
Notion is built on top of three elements:
On top of this conceptual framework, Notion offers UI/UX design and good engineering to turn this idea into a smooth, reliable, consistent application.
graph TD
%%{init: {'theme':'forest'}}%%
Page --Contains--> Page
Page --Contains--> Block
Page --Contains--> Database
Database --Contains, with properties--> Page
Block --Contains--> Block
Block --Contains --> Page
Block --Contains--> Database
As this convoluted graph exemplifies, most elements can contain the same or other types of elements in recursion. A block inside a page inside a database inside a page inside a database. From this recursive structure derives what in software design is usually called "composability". It makes ugly graphs but it makes a great user experience.
After the FKM, I want to introduce you to a second important concept in this reflection: the dictatorship of the app. In short, the need to monetize software with mass appeal has led companies to package it into self-contained, finite, and well-defined units with clear boundaries, specific use cases, and distinct features. With this methodology, they could communicate a clear business offer to the buyer, put a price tag, and gingerly get fucking rich.
This took different forms and names throughout time, platforms, and demographics: programs on desktops, apps on mobile, web apps or simply websites on the Web, and so forth. Now, this isolation, this reduction of software to apps, is not only unnatural but delusional: software comes in systems and no software is autonomous. They need operative systems, libraries, and sometimes external services. Even the rare software designed to run directly on hardware, without intermediate layers, depends on specific hardware assumptions. The App is a lie.
Water doesn't belong in plastic bottles, and anyway, it's not born there: you need a whole planet to make fresh, drinkable water. Apps are ultimately a tool to extract profit from software.
Life and school management for students - Template by Alifah
This lengthy introduction sets the stage for explaining why Notion is so often used for intentional digital gardens, and somehow, it inspires people, who initially adopted it for personal productivity, to create such gardens.