Peterme's lastest, and somewhat aggressively titled, post is a valuable reminder that most "stuff" out there is just too hard to use.
Anyway, the nub of this wee rant is, of course, simplify. It feels like we're reaching a breaking point with new technologies -- if we thought the blinking "12:00" on the VCR was sad, what terrors can we expect? Think about the lesson of rolled throughput yield -- how can we minimize the steps involved? How can we enable people to plug something in and *just have it work*? How can we do a little more work on the design and engineering, so the customer has to do none on their own?
I've seen software and web development projects quite often veer into complexity rather than simplicity. As Peter points out, the "more steps you take, the likelier failure is." Every added feature or field increases the possibility you'll end up with a bloated and useless piece of junk. One example I always think about in this vein is Basecamp. It must have been hard for the designers to resist the temptation to build all sorts of features into this product. But, they aggressively kept it simple. Sure, there are things I wish it would do, like assign to-dos to people. But, every little wish like that would make the system more complex, and probably harder to use. By keeping it clean and basic, they created a system that exudes ease-of-use. The road to software hell is paved with examples of designers and developers piling on features (okay, you can blame Marketing, too, I guess).
Maybe one rule of development and design is: do only what is absolutely needed to fulfill the mission, and do no more.
Posted by Karl
July 30, 2004 10:19 AM