Extreme Simplicity
March 1st, 2006Could this be the manifesto of “Extreme Simplicity?”
10 fundamental rules for the age of user experience technology:
- More features isn’t better, it’s worse.
- You can’t make things easier by adding to them.
- Confusion is the ultimate deal-breaker.
- Style matters
- Only features that provide a good user experience will be used.
- Any feature that requires learning will only be adopted by a small fraction of users.
- Unused features are not only useless, they can slow you down and diminish ease of use
- Users do not want to think about technology: what really counts is what it does for them.
- Forget about the killer feature. Welcome to the age of the killer user-experience.
- Less is difficult, that’s why less is more
Consumer devices or frameworks, we are a product of our times.
Watch and contemplate.
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March 2nd, 2006 at 5:26 am
This video has been removed by the user.
:/
Ren
March 2nd, 2006 at 6:02 am
More likely is “this video has been removed by Microsoft’s lawyers”. That’s a shame, it was quite funny.
March 2nd, 2006 at 6:33 am
Link updated. Ah, the hazards of linking to youtube. Good URLs don’t change. Especially a few hours after you link to them.
Hope this one lasts longer.
March 2nd, 2006 at 10:54 am
Now this was a pretty interesting post…
March 2nd, 2006 at 4:03 pm
Some things that strike me about Extreme Simplicity are:
1. Good design is still important. In fact, brilliant design is really what is needed — and the knowledge and vision that it ncessary to achieve it.
2. Interface is what it is all about because that is how people use the stuff you create. For classes, libraries and frameworks interface is critical.
3. External simplicity may mean internal complexity — that makes our jobs doubly interesting.
You link to Ruby on Rails and it is interesting that the first thing that most people hear about ROR is, “You can get an app up and running in …”
So who’s the best rapid in a rapid world?
March 3rd, 2006 at 3:46 am
[via] Somewhat related link here: “Yahoo’s counterproductive pyramid” - actually best summarized by one of the comments;
Otherwise some of these things are also relative such as “You can’t make things easier by adding to them.” - related to frameworks, particularily ORM, if you know SQL what you did with WACT’s db API makes a whole lot more sense than any kind of ORM. And somehow feel it’s probably easier to teach someone SQL than it is to teach someone about objects but perhaps I’m wrong there.
March 5th, 2006 at 4:50 pm
John Cooper successfully drags this topic out to 288 pages in The Inmates are Running the Asylum [amazon.com]. His Silicon Valley ego can get a little annoying, but his book was essential in getting me ready to build a web application compatible with the average middle-aged woman. Well worth reading.
June 3rd, 2006 at 7:15 am
As a non hi-tech person running a business, I have a very low tolerance for hassle. And I can tell you that simplicity is soooo key for me when operating on the web, using software and even when dealing with vendors on the phone.
The original list of ten mentioned that “confusion is the ultimate dealbreaker”. A marketing expert I know says “a confused mind always says NO”. Same concept and I couldn’t agree more. If something either starts out confusing or becomes confusing along the way, I’m outta there in search of another solution.
If software isn’t intuitive, I bail. Ok, maybe I’m just a big baby, but I just want the tools I use to be as easy as possible to get the result I want so I can move along. I think any technology company can build tools that are simple for techies to use… the mark of a great technology (IMHO) is one that can build tools that are simple for techno-dorks like me to use.
If I have to take a class to use something, I probably won’t. (Unless it’s a matter of business life or death) A perfect example of simplicity making me happy is my blog. I am still flabbergasted at how simple it is to create a blog that looks all fancy-schmancy. Sure there’s a slight learning curve, and I’m sure I’ll continue to learn how to improve it, but I was literally able to get the first iteration of my blog up and running immediately without downloading a manual or calling tech support. And that’s key.
November 10th, 2006 at 3:36 pm
Although I generally agree with this list, I must say that this kind of an approach might lead to creativity being constricted. I mean with freedom often comes complexity. Making things simple can turn things into black and white.
That being said this is perfect approach for making simple apps, which aren’t supposed to do that much.