Adding doesn’t mean improving
One of the best things you can do for your product or service is to keep it simple, but it’s much easier said than done. As I shared from Natalie Nixon a few years ago:
“Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.”
In a recent episode of David Senra’s podcast, where he was chatting with Jason Fried (the founder of the Basecamp software, among other things), they discussed the unnecessary complexity in so many modern devices. Here is Jason talking about a thermostat and a dishwasher at an Airbnb he recently stayed at:
Everything’s a big black glass thing with too much stuff on it because you got to fill up the screen. You can’t just have a tiny screen, you got up a big screen. And if you have a big screen put stuff on it so you put stuff on it.
A dishwasher couldn’t be used the first time without an app to register it. So my mom wants to do the dishes and she had to call the house manager guy he had to come down. He’s like why doesn’t this work I plugged it in and oh there’s an app I gotta get. What? You’re adding and not making it better. To do the dishes? Yeah.
Adding it, not making it better.
I love smart devices, but I also know when a device is too smart for its own good and using the simple version is better. I know you’ve seen the same.
It was a fairly long interview, but it’s absolutely worth your time so check it out here.