Blogroll
14 Apr 10 Product design: keep it simple (really simple!), stupid
I’ve been going back and forth in my head over the last week on the issue of how to put some of my ideas to work. As a geek and techie, my natural instinct is to pack as many features as possible into one package, after all, don’t we all look at feature lists to make our purchasing decisions?
The question to that is an emphatic “No!”. When I started to think about how to market my gee-whiz-bang product that does just about everything I would ever want, I started to struggle to think of ways to explain exactly what it was.
Being a jack-of-all-trades immediately means being a master-of-none in the mind of the human brain. Even though my tap-dancing-do-it-all product might actually be what people eventually wanted, what they needed, it would never have gone anywhere due to the simple fact that people would never connect the 3-4 dots and want it all in one package even if it made sense, it’s just not the way people look for things. It’s the reason TV’s with integrated video/DVD players never took off even though they made great practical sense.
As the human brain is built, it’s better to be considered an “expert” in one area than great in 3-4 different areas. In my case, this means my great product is actually 3-4 different products. I’m pretty sure they will be more successful as standalone products rather than one integrated product. Even if the latter made more logical sense to use.
Focus, simplicity and easily explained products always trump the “smart” multifunctional ones.
