Why Simplicity Matters

By leelefever on July 18, 2005 - 6:21pm.

One of my favorite presenters at WebVisions was BJ Fogg form the Stanford's Persuasive Technologies Lab. (blog) Will has a quick run down of his presentation.

One point that I loved and represents something that I’m currently thinking a lot about lately has to do with adding features to a product. BJ said something along the lines of…

“My belief is that each feature added to a product actually decreases its chance of future success.”

I’ve not always felt this way, but lately points like this have become so real and make so much sense. The future belongs to simplicity.

Submitted by Travis Swicegood (not verified) on July 18, 2005 - 8:32pm.

Lee, you should check out extreme programming, or XP (O'Reilly makes a great pocket reference). It focuses specifically on programming, but many of its teamwork methodologies and focusing on the simplest solution would probably jive well with your outlook. I know from my "programmer's" standpoint it can't be beat for a programming methodology.

Why Simplicity Matters

Submitted by David Tebbutt (not verified) on July 18, 2005 - 11:10pm.

Nice to hear this.
I publish a software product which undergoes continuous development as a result of ongoing conversations with users.
Our aim is always to make it better but, at the same time, to resist unnecessary 'bloat'.
We almost made the fatal mistake of creating a separate development stream for a 'Pro' version which would have all sorts of clever new features.
It took a while, but we eventually realised that this would destroy the core purpose of the program.