

Competing on easy - relation
http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3302-competing-on-easy

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jwdunne
I think, as tech-savvy, I overestimate what users can do or feel comfortable
doing. This makes making things easier a nice challenge.

For example, a colleague needed to check if a link has rel="nofollow". The
first solution is to right click on the link and click Inspect element (he
uses Chrome). This wasnt a good solution because he gave up as soon as he saw
code, despite it highlighting it for him. I wrote up a quick and dirty
bookmarklet as a second solution which either shows a green "dofollow" or a
red "nofollow" with a black BG. This was earlier this year and he still uses
the same dirty little bookmarklet. It made me realise that there are probably
thousands of things I take for granted which would slow down an average user
almost to a stop.

To me, it seems to unearth these things, you have to question assumptions. I
assumed anyone on this planet will have the capacity to right click a link and
inspect the HTML and the contents of the rel attribute. I assumed the 10 mins
writing the bookmarklet would be a waste of time. I was very wrong.

~~~
netcan
My first job out of Uni required me to write up little manuals, take them to
the customer to show them how to upload products to their e-commerce site,
check orders etc.

I'm not a programmer, but I'm fairly technical.

Anyway, actually sitting beside the user as they tried to do things makes you
realize how important easy really is. This was using basically off-the-shelf
software that I thought was pretty user friendly. But, anything outside of the
manual and instruction could not be/was not done.

It isn't really about easy-hard. It's about possible-impossible. There was
some Jobs interview somewhere where he described the early (then current)
Apple/microcomputer progression in orders of magnitude.

people who could build their own computer from parts >> people who could build
it from kits >> people who could write their own software on pre-assembled
computers >> people who could use other people's software >> people who could
use a GUI-based computer.

You could continue this line to ipad apps. How many people use computers but
don't install software (daughters, IT departments, etc do this once per year)?
How many use email that someone sets up for them?

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willvarfar
Why do I think they are sliding towards Easy not Simple? Its a very
fundamental distinction!

<http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy> <\- Rich Hickey, creator
of Clojure and Datomic

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navitronic
Not a huge fan of their blog's redesign.

The combination of the serif font, text-indent on paragraphs and lack of
separation between them makes reading it a chore. One of the first times I
have needed to use Safari's reader mode out of necessity.

~~~
chrismorgan
I didn't even notice the serif font, because I have overridden the font-family
in almost all places to the Ubuntu font-family (hooray for user style
sheets!). I tried it as an experiment somewhere around a year ago. I strike
the occasional website that doesn't look right and where it looks like the
typeface used may have damaged it, but overall, it's _marvellous_. I noticed
very quickly that the whole web was prettier and more readable. I tried going
back, just out of curiosity, a month or two later. I went back to overriding
the font-family less than a week later.

But as far as their layout is concerned, I do like the large typography, and
don't see any problem with the paragraph spacing and layout. Overall, it's a
nice, clean layout.

~~~
gravitystorm
I've been doing this for a few years, along with a reasonable minimum font
size. I find it really tough to go back to a smorgasbord of fonts and sizes,
with some of them often unreadable. Controlling the fonts via Firefox is
awesome.

The biggest downside to this is where sites (e.g. github) try using private-
range unicode codepoints for graphical icons, not realizing that users often
have other fonts set. I really discourage site authors for hacks and stick to
using graphics for icons.

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dantiberian
Does anyone know what it is they're building? I'm struggling to think of a
market that is dominated by free that could also be made easier. Email seems
like a possible bet as all the other major email providers are free.

~~~
true_religion
They're 37 Signals, creators of Ruby on Rails, Basecamp, and other fine things
that may claim to solve a certain task 'easier' than other competitors.

~~~
sutterbomb
I think the question above was referring to the new service they are building,
not what they have already done.

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dave1619
This post really made me think. If you're going after easy then I suppose you
look for things that are currently difficult and you can make a competing
product. This seems to open up a lot of opportunities.

~~~
manmal
Yes, and it's what Apple under Jobs has always done - they made it easy to use
(where easy can mean: easy on the eyes, easy to perform tasks with, easy to
buy, easy to turn off,...). And yes, it does not mean anti-complex, at least
not for the iPhone - take a look into the settings screen, it's become quite
huge by now.

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RossM
I've just noticed that Backpack - a sort of personal notes and tasks tool -
has vanished from their homepage and I can't find an announcement about it.
Does anyone know why this is?

~~~
gt5050
<http://37signals.com/backpack-retired>

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fofmock
I love making things easy, but I think the 37signals group may take things too
far. Their book "Rework" feels like an entrepreneur picture book made for kids
learning to read. I liked the ideas presented in the book, but I really wish
it could have been just a little more detailed.

~~~
s_henry_paulson
I'm not trying to come off as negative, but did you ever stop to wonder if
you're making things more complicated than they actually are?

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ejpastorino
It's funny that most of the comments are about the new blog design and how
people is not liking it.

