Less is Still Just Less.
“Complex” apps are usually a mess. Look at any Adobe app, or Microsoft app. Most of them (not all) are a catastrophic mess. They look like the drawer in your laundry room. The one where disparate items like flashlights, rulers, sewing kits, giveaway pencils, off-sized screws, and IKEA pieces, and half-used batteries come to rest. Not purposefully lain, but because no force but apathy, and gravity could hope to contain them.
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. Keep Reading
Liz on Adding Stuff.
“New ingredients — the new addition of every item, product, person, routine — gets a rigorous evaluation before I add it (“Does this fit into…”). Being aware of any addition makes it part of the conversation and, importantly, there is now a conversation to be had.
What you include, and likewise, what you actively choose not to include is what becomes part of you. Being able to do so while being consistent with what you know to be true is the intersection between conviction and risk. And that won the crown every time.” – from Bobulate.
She nailed it.
We can’t just throw ingredients into the mix without first analyzing why they should be there in the first place. It’s careless. Why would we do that with our apps’ features?
Recently Liked Reads.
The internet has been awesome lately. It’s a great time to be a reader.
The shop I want.
This article cuts to the heart of ecommerce better than all the old “long tail” articles ever did. The real problem of online retail is how to take a commodity and make it precious. When everything is mass produced, and can be shipped anywhere cheaply you have only two options. Carry exclusive products, or curate your product selection so that people rely on your opinion. No more coasting. Having the product is not enough anymore.
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Sacrifices for Simplicity.
Jumpchart, Staction and Paprika are all geared toward simplicity. But with simplicity comes a lot of feature requests, and proclamations that “if it just had this one feature, it would be absolutely perfect!”
We continue to make updates as the internet, and our users evolve, but we’re stubborn in a big way: we’re sticking with simplicity. We feel this mentality is what makes our apps useful to the majority of our users in the first place.
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