Product & Design Philosophy

At Motion, we believe time is the world’s most valuable resource. While you can’t make or buy more time, you can choose how to use it more intentionally. By effectively managing time, you create a multiplier effect that boosts productivity and helps you accomplish more of what matters, in the right order.

As the hub for time management, our mission is:

Increase Every Organization’s Productivity by 100X

At Motion, we aim to bring a 100-fold productivity increase to every organization over the next 25 years. We plan to achieve this by first automating "work about work", and then moving on to automate actual work itself.

This philosophy guides everything we build and how we build it. It shapes our product decisions and ensures we deliver exceptional value to our users. Below are the core principles that drive our approach.

Product Focus

Everything we develop falls into one of three categories:

1. Game-changers: Features that make people want to choose Motion. Example: Automatic planning and rescheduling of daily agendas for individuals and teams.

2. Showstoppers: Essential features that, if missing, would prevent users from adopting Motion, but don’t necessarily attract new users on their own. Examples: Calendar functionality, mobile app, bug fixes, standard project management features.

3. Distractions: Features that have no significant impact on user adoption. Examples: Making the app load marginally faster, adding excessive shortcuts.

At Motion we obsess about our game-changers and features that make our game-changers shine. We are stingy about showstoppers, and do them as long as they help us achieve our mission. And we are obsessed about not getting distracted by anything that doesn’t help us achieve our vision in the shortest amount of time.

Our Core Principles of Product Design

At motion, every time we design a new feature or experience, we design it around these five principles. Think of these principles as a pyramid with (1) Confidence being the bedrock upon which all the other principles stand

Confidence: Users must trust that Motion is managing their time effectively.

• Transparency: users know exactly what Motion is doing on your behalf and why. Users should always feel confident and in control.

• No dead ends: users should never feel stuck or helpless.

• Control: users remain in charge. Anything Motion automates, can also be done and changed manually by our users

Predictability: Our product should behave exactly as users expect from the first interaction.

• Use Familiar Patterns: We utilize established design paradigms for non-innovative features, avoiding unnecessary complexity.

• Simplicity: Features are designed to be immediately understandable without requiring deep thought or learning.

• Visual Feedback: Animations and progress indicators show when the app is working, enhancing user understanding and trust.

Experience: We aim for excellence in user experience (UX) and high standards in user interface (UI) design.

• Competitive Functionality: Our solutions cover at least 80% of the most common actions users perform with market-leading tools, allowing them to stay within Motion.

• Focus on Game-Changers: We obsess over the UX of our standout features, ensuring they are intuitive and deliver exceptional value.

• Thoughtful Design: Our app reflects care and attention without being overly complicated, striking a balance between aesthetics and usability.

Productivity: Motion is designed with our mission at the core so that every interaction makes users feel productive and streamlines their workflows.

• Ergonomics: We optimize for minimal effort, reducing unnecessary clicks and movements to enhance efficiency.

• Automation: We leverage AI and automation to handle tasks on behalf of users when appropriate, such as auto-scheduling.

• Smart Defaults: We choose sensible defaults that save time and reduce friction for the majority of users.

Education: Because most our our game-changers will be features that have never been done before, we need to guide users through new and innovative features to maximize their benefit.

• Effective Onboarding: We provide excellent onboarding experiences for all major features, especially our game-changers.

• Built-In Guidance: Clear labels, tooltips, and helpful prompts are integrated into the UX to facilitate learning.

• Clear Communication: We use straightforward language for buttons and actions, and offer detailed error messages with recovery options.

At Motion, our commitment to these principles ensures we continue to build a product that not only manages time effectively but also delights and empowers our users.
- Luis (Head of Product)