Here’s an article by David Pogue in the New York Times discussing a new camcorder that has been the #1 seller on Amazon since it came out. What is the secret of it’s success? Less features, not more. It has no optical zoom, no viewfinder, no menus, no settings. It is called the Flip, made by Pure Digital. And it alone accounts for 13% of Amazon’s camcorder sales. The camcorder starts up very quickly, is easy to use, and is flying off the virtual shelves.
The success reminds me of the Wii. While Microsoft and Sony were working on very sophisticated game machines, with faster processors, better graphics, etc, Nintendo took the simple approach with its Wii, and the marketplace responded enthusiastically.
When we designed IssueTrak back in 2000, we strove for simplicity. Back then the Palm PDA was popular, and it was refreshing to work with its interface, which did not have an over-abundance of features. It had the features that were useful, and they were implemented simply and straightforwardly. It was a joy to work with. We would say we take the Palm approach to software.
We went to great pains to be sure the interface was not cluttered with features that weren’t going to be used. An example is Project support. It is possible to turn on Projects, and associate issues with Projects, and gets lists of Projects that have not been completed yet, etc. However, by simply unchecking a checkbox in the Admin screen, Project support disappears everywhere. It is no longer on the submit screen, or the search screen, or in any menus.
By doing this with many of the IssueTrak features, we end up with a clean, simple screen for end-users. And the users report that the software is easy to use, and works well.
My son introduced me to this quote by Charles Mingus that I hope we strive for here at IssueTrak:
“Making the simple complex is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity”.
It is surprisingly difficult to pare down anything complicated to what’s really important. When done right, the result is success like that realized by the Flip, the Wii, and we’re hoping IssueTrak!
