JoeVC

Users Are Lazy, Keep It Simple

I started this mini-post a month back and had to resurrect it after coming across this fantastic quote from Ariel Waldman, a digital anthropologist, founder of Spacehack.org, and former NASA coordinator.

“Simplified UI that is able to achieve what the user is motivated to accomplish often outweighs gorgeous design.

In social networks, Twitter and Foursquare are shining examples of this factor, while Tumblr leads the way on balancing simple interactivity with decent aesthetics and information architecture.”

Users are generally lazy, which is why simple beats rich but complex almost every time. Twitter users type 140 characters and hit send. Foursquare users check in and hit send.

Despite an incredibly complex backend, Google is the ultimate example of simplicity.  Mint is another example of a service that married simplicity with brilliant design.  Making search simple, and accounting simply beautiful, delivered great returns.