Simplicity Rules

Normally I’m against screens that try to do too much. While logging in and Signing up are very similar tasks, merging the two can be very confusing to both new and returning visitors.

Adobe’s Sign In page does a good job of walking users through the process. The difference from the standard “if you have an account go here… otherwise, go here” is subtle, but smart.

Artificial constraints can help us by tricking us into thinking they are actual constraints. Some common examples:

• Set your clock ahead ten minutes, so you’ll always be on time.
• Transfer money from your checking account to savings, so you won’t spend it.
• Pretend a project is due a day sooner, because you work better under pressure.

Similarly, the POWER HOUR was once part of my daily routine. I sometimes did as much during that hour as the rest of the day. I know someone who keeps a kitchen timer by his desk to encourage short bouts of heightened productivity.

Today, Ryan Carson brings us The Four-Day Week:

The problem wasn’t a time issue, it was a mental issue. I knew I had a whole week to finish my work, so I spread it out over five (or seven!) days. If I knew I only had four days to finish a whole week of work, it would’ve motivated me to get things done more efficiently.

The Goog’s VP of Products, Marissa Mayer says constraints can shape and focus problems, leading to truly creative solutions. Indeed, this is the whole idea behind aiming for simplicity, even though it can sometimes seem lazy and others think simple is wrong.

From last month’s Business 2.0, Simple Minds is Paul Kedrosky’s claim that “the simplicity cult has it wrong.”

Kedrosky usually makes some excellent points, and this is no different:

What we learn from airbags, then, is that the solution isn’t to eliminate features from products or to reduce the amount of information we receive. The solution is to have more features and more information in ways that are less intrusive and more carefully prioritized.

I would call this a type of simplification. Separate wheat from chaff, focus on what is important. It seems like Kedrosky is calling for there to be more layers, each one simple and pointed to the current task.

The full article is worth a read available at Business 2.0.

One of my basic Web beliefs is to be nice to the user. Make things easy for visitors and they’ll use your site. It’s a painfully obvious statement, but as a whole the cobblers of the Web (myself included) aren’t doing a good job.

Sometimes we have roadblocks, like security. I have so many site registrations that it can be a lot of work to guess my username and password. As a defense, I know many who have the same login for every site. What would security experts have to say about that?

I want my bank to care about online security. Paypal, the IRS, and my email provider should all look out for me. But… that’s about it. Most sites should care more about my experience than my security. Heck, maybe you don’t need registration?

Then there’s online mapping and driving directions. I use these so often, I have quick searches in my browser to make it faster. But, it could still be easier. I live in Portland. Over 90% of my map searches are in Portland. When I search without typing in a city, Matthew Hurst thinks they should take a wild guess. If I ran a mapping solution, I would track the city and start making smart assumptions. Maybe I’d even fall back on mapping IP locations.

But I think the problem here is privacy. When machines start getting too smart, some people feel a little weirded out. So, even though the user experience is better, we hold off on making the right decision to avoid the cantankerous few who think we’re listening to their thoughts and sending cranial transcripts to the government.