Complex apps “do more.” But they do it at the expense of crashes, and a manual in seven languages. Users use them, they hate them. They’re trapped by some function that no other app has, but that they need.

Take Photoshop for example (please take it!). No other app does RGB/CMYK, and compositing as elegantly. It’s amazing with it’s bezier curve handling and it’s simple yet incredibly powerful layer management. But on awkwardly grafted on top of that are functions like 3D compositing, check-in/check-out, and “share my screen” which nobody uses. These three examples are some of the more egregious, but they’re nowhere near the totality of the list. The whole app is a cruft of duplicative menus, bad help systems, and wanderingly bad UI.

But I still use it. Why? Because those features I need very badly to be good at my job are found nowhere else within a single app. If they were, I would pay not only the (freaking) $700 I normally pay for a license, but I swear on my design career I would pay double. Double.

I would pay double for an app that did the things I need in Photoshop, but did not crash, and did not suck. I want prettiness in a UI. I want logic, and elegance. Like most designers, I love surrounding myself with well-built things. I find joy in interacting with a laptop hinge that slides into place just-so, or a touch screen that actually reacts to my touch.

There are apps like http://www.pixelmator.com/ that I’m dying to use. Gorgeous, well planned, and humanist. But it doesn’t do the things that I absolutely have to have to make the switch. The pain of switching would mean I have to run multiple apps, or keep a copy of CrashyShop on hand for use many times a week. It’s not worth the pain. No matter how much I love beautifully designed things, I have to make a living with my tools, and if anything slows me down even slightly, I’m not going to use it.

So. We have about a million blog articles online today expounding the excellence, and instant success of “simple.” You can even look at our blog to see how we’re devotees of “less.” But I’ll be honest- our most profitable app is our most complex. People pay for functionality if it is done well. People use simple if it is free…

So as developers we’re left with a problem. Feature-rich applications lead to crufty interfaces. It’s not unavoidable, but it’s nearly inevitable. If you’re ever going to launch your app you must (MUST) limit its feature set. But if you’re ever going to make money off your app, you have to keep adding to it.

Gradually, like the ocean tides, you wear down the apprehension of your audience. Keep beating the drum. Keep enticing people who have tried it once before to try once again. Eventually the feature that kept them from sticking before will be the one you just added. But the game is to do it well. To do it smartly. To add features without adding complexity.

We are not experts on the subject, but we’re cracking every book, blog, and beer we can to try to get to the bottom of it. Every new feature brings the chance to add new users, and alienate old ones… It’s the way you add it that makes the difference between winning or losing users.

Another problem is that you will expend all your energy and creative talent on other people’s projects. And what will you have to show for it? At best, a great portfolio, client list, and testimonials. But if you want to keep eating, you’ll need to keep working.”

Great point. We all know the dangers of getting caught up in too much work. It’s a slippery slope and you don’t want to find yourself apologizing for the three month content break on your blog. It can feel selfish to want to put your business first, but when clients see the care and devotion you give your own brand, it’s a positive reinforcement of the quality work you’ll turn out for them.

Everybody wins.

- Via 99%

Focused
What comes to mind when you think of being focused? Perhaps you see someone on a tightrope, focused solely on that next life or death step. Maybe you think of a golfer, shutting out everything around him and putting all his energy into that tiny white ball.

Focus is a trait that many of us lack. Modern society has trained us to be such master multi-taskers that, I’d venture to guess, if someone told you that you were terrible at multi-tasking you would take that as an affront, a slight on your personal character. Focus goes against everything that modern communications marketing strives to tell us. Get more things done, in less time, by doing everything at once. But having focus, that ability to shut out your surroundings in order to concentrate on one, and only one, thing, can take the quality of your work to the next level; whether that work be winemaking or building web apps.

Imagine you are facing a really difficult problem, one that appears completely impossible at first glance. In the beginning it’s daunting, but the longer you think about it and the more you stare at it, the more doable the problem becomes. Your mind begins to conjure creative solutions and cross reference those solutions against other situations and problems in your memory. All the sudden you’re making headway. But just when you’ve started to feel like you’ve got the problem under control, your email notifier dings. You open up your email to see the latest support request in your inbox. You’re focus is ruined. You’re mind has switched gears and moved on from the line of thinking you were following.

Focus is all about using your limited time to put the best of yourself into a single project. If you’re jumping here and there between five or six tasks you’re going to do a crap job at most, if not all of them: It’s just that simple.

Deliberate
Being deliberate in your actions is important. It goes back to a concept that we at Paste hold dearly: Planning. If you thoroughly think through your situation, your problem, your app, your whatever, and you focus long enough to let your mind wrap itself around the issues and problems you’re facing, that computer in your skull will form a concrete plan about where you want to go and how to go about getting there. Planning isn’t just about putting all the cards in the right order on the table, it’s about taking the time to question each card individually and then devise for yourself the right order for those cards.

We don’t design, mock-up or begin building any app or new feature without first taking time to thoroughly question the idea in our heads. Once we have a clear mental picture of how the app or feature is going to work and what it’s intended purpose is we can take deliberate action in as few steps as possible to accomplish our goal.

Run with it
Being focused and deliberate doesn’t happen overnight, but keeping the concepts in your mind on a daily basis can make worlds of difference to the quality of your work. If you’re still having a tough time motivating, here are a few ways you can help to calm the storm around you:

• Force yourself to work on one and only one project at a time. If need be, give yourself a concrete time frame for each activity you need to work on. During this time frame you are only allowed to work on the prescribed project.


• Turn off the email notifier and take the phone off the hook. You can always return phone calls later, when you’ve gotten your work done. We really like Think for mac. It’s a program that limits your focus to one app at a time.


• If you work in a open plan office, try to instate a time of day in which no one is allowed to talk to each other. You’ll find you get more work done in that part of the day that you used to get done in a whole day.


• If you can, work from home a few days a week. We’re a remote shop and can attest to the efficiency of having your time to yourself when you need it!

And if all of this sounds too daunting, just begin by trying to cut the multi-tasking down a little or just disabling all the notifier sounds on your computer. Giving your mind the space (and time) that it needs to solve problems, plan for eventualities and really produce creative material is hard enough as it is. By eliminating multi-tasking and distractions you can give yourself a much-needed head start towards getting your work done, and getting it done as well as you possibly can.