Key Points
- More features equals more complexity
the more features you add, the less chance you have of coming across a new feature that is of real value to someone. Features will fall flat
- building massive legacy of code that needs maintenance thereby increasing maintenance cost and slows down reaction to the market
- users can't easily find the features that are important to them. They also start resenting to pay for features they don't use.
- Three perspectives when designing any piece of technology
The manager's
- The engineer's
- The user's
- Simplicity
To feel in control
- what feels simple to someone in one situation may not be true for everyone in every situation
- Technology becomes interesting when it is catered for a wider audience than the experts
- Prioritize features that satisfy mainstream user's needs with minimal effort
- People recognize and place value on the small differences
- It does not mean want or poverty. It means anything foreign to it should be taken away
- Watch out for fake simplicity -
a.k.a. I tried my best to explain it to you. If you don't get it, its your own fault!
- shifting responsibility for failure onto the user
- most people don't bother reading instructions, they prefer to get on with doing
- when user needs to correct an error, it breaks his concentration and makes the experience feel complex
- High Data Ink Ratio: don't waste inks on anything that isn't content or in repeating content
- Simplify sentences
- Managing change within organization
Connecting change to the benefits
companies tend to measure success by making money and growing
- need to understand how this piece works before attempting to simplify user experience
- Simpler design = sell more cars or sell at higher price?
- Prioritizing changes
divide up a fixed number of points across all desired features
- Benchmarking the design
Write down a one-line description in the simple terms
- Write down any guidelines I want to stick to
- Watching people in the real world
- Audiences
Types
Experts
make a lot of noise
- wants a complex product, a.k.a. a rocket ship
- might be best to ignore them
- interested in customizing their settings
- value precision of control
- want perfect results
- wants to take things apart to see how they work
- wants an exact match
- wants principals
- Willing adopters
ok using fancy new features as long as we make them just a bit easier
- will put up with a problem because they have learned to tolerate them
- Mainstreamers
They use technology to get a job done **now**
- value ease of control
- want reliable results
- afraid to break something
- Vast majority of people are mainstreamers
- wants a good match
- wants examples and stories
- only really care about a bicycle will get confused by complex products
- Best to watch how they would use the product
- If you want simplicity, and to be seen as innovative, you should aim to please this group
- tend to forget what they learned when under pressure
- Key insight
If you want to make something simple, design what mainstream audience wants and can do when under pressure
- people don't graduate from one group to another even after years of using a product they tend to stay in the same group
- It has more to do with their underlying attitude towards technology than the amount of time spent using it
- Mainstreamer's Emotional needs
achieve a lot
- still feel in control of the outcomes
- don't want to worry about the software or technology
- Capturing the experience in a story
describe the experience using the user's language in a story
- avoiding describing in too much details
- A good user story is brief, concrete, credible and uses relevant details
- Components
World
- Character
- Plot
- Test your insight by spending more time watching people in the real world
- Make sure to capture the correct vision
- Understanding what's core takes time
- The really great person will keep on going... and come up with an elegant really beautiful solution that works
- The four strategies
remove
get rid of all unnecessary buttons
- Do a few things far better than their rivals
Example: BaseCamp does a fraction of what Microsoft share point does but is described as addictively easy to use
- Remove the clutter to focus on solving a few important problems really well
- users can meet goals without distraction
- don't remove it because it is difficult to build!
- watch out for sunk cost fallacy: do not avoid getting rid of them because they are already there
- Watch out for What ifs - find out whether users really find the feature important
- Identify user's goals and set them in order of priority - focus solutions that completely meet users' high priority goals before moving on to lower priority goals
- organize
arrange the buttons into groups that make more sense
- Hide
hide all but the most important buttons behind a hatch and only reveal it when absolutely necessary to do so
- Displace
create a very simple remote control with a few basic features
- control the rest via a menu on the TV screen
Further Readings
- Insanely great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer that changed Everything, Steven Levy
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