Paul Boutin in Slate writing about YouTube: "The secret to success is to make everything one-button easy, then get out of the way."
Via: Greg Lindin
From his entry More on Tech Complexity
I'm reminded of the Unix philosophy. Small tools that do one thing, that can be lashed together as needed to tackle bigger tasks. It works so well as an engineering philosophy, but it never seems to work as an economic philosophy.
Or does it? Let's take the absurd route for a minute and say Microsoft did implode. Would we see an emergence of small tech companies doing small, specific things well? And if we did, how long until they started buying each other up, became Microsoft 2, and imploded again? Is this a unbreakable cycle we're on indefinitely?
Via Brent Simmons
Jason Fried picks up on some simplicity at southwest airlines:
Simple fares (no secrets, one-way fares aren?t more expensive that round trip fares, fewer fees), simple planes (they only fly 737s ? every SW pilot or flight attendant can work any flight), simple seating assignments (they don?t have any), simple meals (they don?t have any), simple friendliness (shiny happy people), less big airport hassles (serving the unserved at smaller, simpler airports), dead simple rewards program (based on # of flights, not miles), simpler fuel costs (they buy futures to lock in prices), etc.
Dharmesh Shah has an article called Less is sometimes less:
Less (features) is not always more. So, lets dig a little deeper here. In every technology industry that I know, customers demand more features/capabilities over time. Whether it be software, a car or a mobile phone ? as time goes, you expect more out of the technology in your life for it to continue to be useful to you. Paradoxically, you want things simpler too ? but simpler does not mean you?re willing to give up on features. You want both.
There is always a sweet spot between having too many features, and not having enough. Finding that sweet spot is the hard part. It's a tradeoff, and tradeoffs are quite common in this industry.
GigaOM has a good article called Make That Device Simple:
"Simpler is better ? despite popular wisdom and a marketplace ingrained in the creation of products that are ever smaller, faster and more feature laden," said Roland Rust, "Our research showed that consumers will be initially attracted to the mobile phone that 'does everything' for example, but once they get it home they become frustrated," Rust said. "Companies can actually make more money in the long run by making products that are simpler than what customers think they want. The smarter strategy is to design simple, dedicated devices like the iPod, that do one thing very well, to build long-term satisfaction and profitable customer relationships."