You can try to win a features arms race by offering everything under the sun. Or you can just focus on a couple of things and do ‘em really well and get people who really love those things to love your product. For little guys, that’s a smarter route.

When you choose that path, you get clarity. Everything is simpler. It’s simpler to explain your product. It’s simpler for people to understand. It’s simpler to change it. It’s simpler to maintain it. It’s simpler to start using it. The ingredients are simpler. The packaging is simpler. Supporting it is simpler. The manual is simpler. Figuring out your message is simpler. And most importantly, succeeding is simpler.

#

Everything that’s potentially worrying about the real-time web

Weezer, plane crashes and everything else that’s worrying about the real-time web by Paul Carr

...what were we all doing? Filming and tweeting and checking in rather than just putting our phones away and enjoying the gig. Why does the world need two thousand photos of the same band on the same stage, all taken from a slightly different angle. That kind of 360 degree imagery might have been useful on the day Kennedy was shot – not least because it would have kept Oliver Stone quiet – but for a Weezer gig?

...And yet this real-time mentality – pictures/tweets or it didn’t happen – continues to seep into every aspect of our lives, both personally and professionally. Whereas once we might attend a conference to watch the speakers and perhaps learn something, today our priority is to live blog it – to ensure our followers know we’re on the inside...

Real-Time is a Collaboration by Kevin Makice

The second key assumption is that the real-time web is an individual activity. It isn’t. Individuals are involved, but the appeal and value of real-time content is in the sheer number of people participating and the wide range of personal experiences they capture.

...With new information comes new skills and opportunity for reflection. We see this happening all the time with the evolving strategies of Twitter use...The value you see today may not be the same value you will see tomorrow. People change.

It would be a mistake to adopt a utopian view and discount Carr’s critique. However, I believe that what will ultimately emerge from real-time web is a Zen awareness in the here and now. The current flaws in this beast can and will be overcome.

And from the comments to the original TechCrunch article:

Too long, please translate into 140 characters. #

It's a Shrodinger's tweet phenomemon. #

I have a two part response to all this, and hopefully it won't take me weeks to compose it, but it will take longer than right now, so for now, I leave these without comment. These will become links to the follow up posts, however:

-- (Everything that’s potentially worrying about) Attention and the real-time web
-- (Everything that’s potentially worrying about) Love and the real-time web

Left vs Right Infographic

As much as I detest binary analysis of...well, anything, this infographic struck a chord:



This is via the wonderful Information is Beautiful, which comments

This kind of visual approach to mapping concepts really excites me. I like the way it coaxes me to entertain two apparently contradictory value systems at the same time. Or, in other words, I like the way it f**ks with my head.

"It shouldn’t surprise any of us that they stopped caring."

Our industry has collectively taught average people over the last few decades that computers should be feared and are always a single misstep from breaking. We’ve trained them to expect the working state to be fragile and temporary, and experience from previous upgrades has convinced them that they shouldn’t mess with anything if it works. They’ve learned to ignore our pressures to always get the latest versions of everything because our upgrades frequently break their software and workflow. They expect unreliable functionality, shoddy software workmanship, unnecessary complexity, broken promises from software marketers, and degrading hostility from their office’s IT staff.

From the frequently brilliant Marco Arment.

I have original posts brewing around here, promise; they just take a lot longer to finish than the quick quote-and-link hack.

Spammers, Evildoers, and Opportunists

It’s not your job to create content for Google...Your audience is your readers, not Google’s algorithm.

Derek Powazek on SEO

Spray-On Usability vs Cult of Design

An older but still very applicable post from daringfireball.net:

It’s not something every programmer can learn. Most programmers don’t have any aptitude for UI design whatsoever. It’s an art, and like any art, it requires innate ability. You can learn to be a better writer. You can learn to be a better illustrator. But most people can’t write and can’t draw, and no amount of practice or education is going to make them good at it. Improved, yes; good, no.

Conversely, some people who are good UI designers aren’t programmers. But the rock stars are the guys who can do both, and they are few and far between.

...Great software developers don’t design for morons. They design for smart, perceptive people — people just like themselves. They have profound respect for their users.

I actually disagree with Mr. Gruber on his last point. I'm not sure the designers of really great user interfaces have a profound respect for their users.

I think a designer's relationship with his or her audience is like that of an honest believer's relationship with God: respect, sure, but mostly punctuated by fear, frustration, doubt and an infuriating love. When one spends hours moving dots on a screen for the pleasure of an invisible other one has entered the realm of religion. I think being able to not only live in that tension but thrive and make good decisions while in it is the aspect of design that makes it more an art (or a priesthood). That we actualize our thoughts and feelings with text (code) that becomes objects is no more relevant to our real calling than if our tools were paints and brushes.

(This rabbit hole brought to you via @stephenanderson.)

Should There Be a Unified Set of Styles For Web Interfaces?

I comment on "Should There Be a Unified Set of Styles For Web Interfaces?":

The main issue is that we need more voices for sanity in our web application design. I think our current issues are natural growing pains from making an application framework out of a technology originally created for documents.

I think you should contribute a sane voice...

This is something I've thought about writing about here, so just as good someone else did and started a good conversation about it.

The fight for simplicity

I spoke to simplicity before, but lately it has become a bit of a mantra of mine, accosted from all sides, it seems, by complexity. I've made some observations:

• Complexity is a powerful tool to disguise ignorance; in fact, complexity can transform ignorance into brilliance in the eyes of your foolhardy audience. "If you can't convince them, confuse them." Complexity engenders confusion, and people would rather agree with absurdity than appear confused and thus ignorant. This is closely related to the wisdom of crowds.
• Similarly, complexity can overwhelm our beauty sensors. Human brains will almost always confuse the novel for the beautiful, so we pile on the novelties in attempts to convey beauty. It's not until we have a steaming pile that we realize that none of those things were beautiful.
• Alpha geeks and entrepreneurs (often) love complexity. It's the reason they are in the business. Simple solutions bore them. They are going to be drawn towards the more complex solution without consideration of alternatives. (By "complex solution" I don't necessarily mean in regards to technical details.) You want to work with the smartest people possible, of course, and it may not always be as obvious as the famous unwashed Linux administrator who refuses to work with anyone else in the company, but there is a reason there has been a lot of work around new models for successful thinking, pushback on being overly clever, a movement for building less.

These aren't postures we adopt knowingly. It's not like anyone cognitively enjoys complexity or clutter. We're not all striving to be collectors. We inch our way into it, one user interface element or one line of code at a time. And some of those elements and lines cannot be avoided. But when they can be, they should be.

In the almost two months since I started this post, i've been collecting links that relate to simplicity, most within the realm of web design and user interface design, as that is an area I read the most about:

• 30 examples of extreme minimalism in web design. As advertised.
• Marco Arment with a simple compare/contrast.
• Your app vs successful apps. A simple explanation of user interface simplicity.
• Practicing product minimalism.
• Managing UI Complexity by Brandon Walkin is a extremely well written post well advertised by its title. It contains many great tips for simplifying the user interface of applications. He mentions a common design problem I've often encountered:

  The [user interface] reflects the developer’s model of the task rather than the user’s model.

• Approaching a Minimum Viable Product and Minimum Viable Product: a guide.
• Do The Simplest Thing That Could Possibly Work.

More on Twitter (queue sighing)

I'm quoting myself, in a comment on the brilliant and humane Brain Oberkirch's blog:

I was in total agreement when I first read this post; for some reason I came back around to it (because you've been too quiet--too busy I bet) and now I have an additional thought about all this twitter-handle-as-identity. There is a weird paradox about twitter in that I can learn the most about you, and the least about you, over twitter.

If you are a stranger I can learn that "Oh, I'm really interested in you!" or "Oh, I'm not really that interested in you."

If you are a friend, I can learn "Oh, you like asparagus too?!" or, "You're at the hospital? What can I do to help?"

It comes back to the low threshold of the information, its ambient nature. I can choose to ignore it quickly, or retain it and take action on it equally as fast.

Back to your original point, it is the stranger case. I meet some people at a conference, I follow them on twitter. Within a few hours or days I have an idea if this is going to go anywhere. While going to their site and emailing them or subscribing to their blog's RSS feed might have taken a significant amount of attention and energy, a quick "follow brianoberkirch" sent from my phone is low cost and allows me to quickly start making very small decisions about what the future might hold for this initial, awkward, short social transaction.

Love this graphic

From the amazing iso50. (Don't miss his amazing Layer Tennis match.)

I just used the word amazing twice in a row. Ah! Now three times in a row!