

Best word of advice: Simplify - bwertz
http://versiononeventures.com/best-word-of-advice-simplify/

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ThomPete
Here are mine:

 _1\. Start simple, stay simple._

It cannot be said enough. Less is more – much more, and there is a very good
reason that it pays to understand.

If you do less you can measure more. If you can measure more you can better
experiment with what works.

Most products are simple, based on simple insights.

Make sure that you stay true to those insights, until you know you tried out
every different interpretation of them. Don’t add new features just because
you think that it will help, it wont, not yet. If your product becomes a
success it’s not because of how many features it has.

 _2\. Don’t confuse change with improvement._

One of the biggest challenges record artist face when producing a new album is
fatigue. They get this from listening to the same riffs, passages, drum
tracks, choruses etc. over and over and over. It’s actually one of the reasons
why many have a problem listening to their own album when it’s finally out.
Startups as intense and time consuming as they are, have similar problems.
It’s very tempting after a couple of months of looking at the same design to
want to change it and think you are improving your product. You aren’t, so
don’t succumb to the temptation. It’s not worth it.

Furthermore, if it goes like it does in most cases, you will soon enough have
to spend resources on changing things after you launch.

 _3\. Build to integrate._

Think about whether your product could be a good extension to already existing
products/services. That way you can tap into already existing digital
ecosystems and leverage on their popularity and reach this will give you some
standards to adhere to. Remember that the more you are able to interface with
other services the more trust you will establish. Guilt by association works
both ways.

 _4\. Don’t do everything that is possible only what is necessary._

Constrain yourself. A good product has limitations. It doesn’t just succumb to
every temptation that comes along. Focus on what makes your product the
product and only add features if you get clear signs that it is needed. Most
users will have to learn your product anyway so don’t try to impress them with
features before they understand what your product is all about. I-Tunes have
many flaws, Basecamp from 37Signals leaves a lot to be asked for, but when all
is said and done, their products are rock solid and there is no feature like
the rock solid feature.

 _5\. Usability studies and focus groups are for refinement not for
innovation._

Let me be perfectly clear. Running a successful and informative usability
study or focus group wont help you understand whether the market wants your
product or whether you have solved your interaction flow satisfactory. I know
there is a lot of buzz around User Centered Design and that a hoard of
usability experts will claim that they can help you design more successful
products if you just ask the user (Which I find ironic). Don’t believe the
hype, I say this as someone who also makes a living doing usability tests.
There are a few situations where usability studies make sense for startups,
but most likely it wont be in your situation.

There is no one–to–one relationship between what people say in a focus group
and what they actually do. It’s way to complex and there are way to many
psychological elements and social dynamics involved to allow you to
extrapolate important data out of it at an early stage.

In most cases you are testing in a pseudo environment with mock-ups, html
prototypes or even paper prototypes. Just imagine how Twitter, SMS, Google or
LastFM in it’s early days would have scored. So many products need to be
experienced before users will provide you with any valuable insights to build
on.

It would be like trying to determine the usage and usability of a hammer by
looking at a piece of paper with a drawing of it. You get the picture.

 _6\. A feature is not a product._

Speaking of hammers.

Don’t just think about your product as a bunch of features. Instead focus on
what it is your are selling at it’s core. What is needed for your product to
function? How much can you take away from it without sacrificing the core
product.

Think about features as something to add after you have launched.

[http://000fff.org/wp-
content/uploads/2009/11/product_feature...](http://000fff.org/wp-
content/uploads/2009/11/product_feature1.png)

A hammer has one purpose, which is to help you knock in nails. Everything on
top of that is features. Therefore understand when you are working on your
core product and when you are working on adding features.

The benefits of thinking like this, is that it will help you establish a very
clear an precise picture of what makes your product your product. Which means
you will much better be able to understand why you are adding features when
you are and won’t get caught in the “me to” behavior that can drive companies
out of business very fast.

 _7\. Think how, not what._

What matters is not what functionality your product has, but how it works. A
sign-up process is not just a sign-up process, a checkout process is not just
a checkout process, a button is not just a button, a rating system is not just
a rating system.

Think about how you can stand out by introducing something that everyone else
might have but in a unique way. That’s what Steepster did when they re-
designed their rating system (se how they did here
[http://blog.steepster.com/post/226679106/better-rating-
syste...](http://blog.steepster.com/post/226679106/better-rating-system)).
Skype was not the first VOIP provider, far from, but Skype managed to make it
stand out and look like a product not just a technology. In other words they
productified a technology

You will be surprised how much the “how” can help improving your product.

 _8\. It’s not innovation to use the latest technology._

It’s tempting to try and set yourself apart by using the latest build of some
framework or technology. But don’t do it just because it’s the latest. Make
sure that you understand the implications of what you are introducing. Is it
processor intensive, is it increasing load time, does it improve the
experience, is it understood by enough developers so that you can optimize it.

If you can’t answer the above, you probably shouldn’t do it.

All to often companies get caught in thinking that new technology in itself is
the differentiation factor. But as most successful businesses know.
Innovations have an introduction curve and not everyone should take advantage
of a given technology just because it’s available.

Full post here: [http://000fff.org/beyond-aesthetics-design-tips-for-
startups...](http://000fff.org/beyond-aesthetics-design-tips-for-startups/)

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claudius
This makes some good point, except for (at least) one:

    
    
       > 3. Simplify your UI.
       > […] Taking away features can be so much harder than adding features,
       > but subtracting often creates the most value for your users.
    

Really? By this reasoning, Gnome 3 must be far better than anything before,
and Nautilus 3.6 must have greatly improved over previous versions. Heck,
based on such a general statement, ‘mail’ is probably also better than any GUI
email client and ‘cat’ must be the best text editor ever.

‘If you create a system that any idiot can use, then only idiots will find it
useful.’ still holds, even though dumbed-down versions of everything become
somewhat more popular from time to time.

~~~
johndavidback
I think you're right in some circumstances and perhaps not so in others. Gmail
in it's current amalgamation is slick and some features are hidden in menus
that really don't get that much action. This is certainly a preferable user
experience. At worke we track Omniture analytics on every click event on our
websites, half of most buttons/links/actions are never interacted with.

~~~
claudius
The difference is in simplifying the UI versus taking features away. The
former is perfectly fine, the best UIs (in my opinion) don’t exist/are
perfectly invisible. However, taking features away in order to ‘simplify the
UI’ is the wrong approach – making these features accessible in such a way
that they don’t clutter the UI, preferably sorted/ranked by frequency of usage
certainly is superior to dropping them. That's why Emacs has M-x/M-:, menus
were invented, every sane desktop environment has some way to bring up a
programme by its name and human-readable configuration files were invented:
Such that the most obvious parts of the UI can offer the most frequently used
features and all other, less-frequently used but still necessary, features are
accessible in some way.

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tgrass
Anyone care to discuss this in relation to a product like AutoCAD?

(It's beyond my ken, but I'd like to hear)

~~~
retroafroman
I've used AutoCAD quite a bit, and it's complexity goes to show that a product
doesn't necessarily need to be overly shiny and simple to sell. It does follow
a few of the principles it's talked about, such as the simplifying of the UI
by moving to a "ribbon" UI not too unlike the move Office made recently, and
splitting out features to different products. For example all AutoCAD releases
can draw lines and circles, but AutoCAD Architecture has different advanced
features that that of say, AutoCAD Electrical. Backwards compatibility is a
huge issue in the CAD industry, not only with files, but also UI issues like
keyboard shortcuts. AutoCAD does this pretty well. I doubt someone who used
AutoCAD back in the 80s would have a hard time sitting down in front of the
latest version and still getting the same work done without the extra
features. The UI and even the toolset are all extremely customizable, but the
defaults are very sane as well.

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cek
It turns out the real challenge in creating excellent things is being as
excellent at saying no as you are at saying yes.

Learn how to build an organization that can do a few things, really, really
well and you will win. The trick is getting really good at saying No.

