Simplicity Rules

Adam DuVander on keeping it simple

2012 Starts With a New WifiPDX

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If I were a cobbler and I had kids, they’d be very happy today. Today would be the day I finally gave them shoes! My Portland WiFi site was responsible for some of my first forays into map scripting, but it was dreadfully out of date. Now the site has a brand new look and is more map-centric than it was when it was redesigned six years ago.

In fact, when I started the site in 2004, there was no such thing as the Google Maps API. And I’ve given many mapping talks where I go a little bit grandpa on the audience, telling them how hard it was to translate addresses to latitude and longitude points (geocode) in those days.

The WifiPDX of 2005-2011 was showing its age, both technically and visually. In late 2008 I started working on a new version, but writing a mapping book got in the way of creating a mapping site. Finally, last August I decided to pick up the project again.

When I look at the progression of the site, I’m really happy with the updates. But, working in fits and starts over the last few months, I had a much longer list of things to do. These weren’t even major features, just ways to polish what’s there. Then I realized I needed to listen to my own advice and release early rather than release ready.

Some of the non-technical updates I particularly want to point out:

  • Every hotspot page can be edited by anyone–WifiPDX is a sorta-Wiki
  • The home page is mapified, complete with closest WiFi searching
  • The closest WiFi feature tries to guess your location
  • The WiFi map can show both neighborhoods and types of places

There’s plenty more going on, but those are the big ones. I could also do plenty more to it–and perhaps I will. But for now it’s nice to be at a state of completion on my first side project in two years.

Something Complex Can Be Simple, Something Complicated is Always Complicated

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Many people use “complex” as a synonym for “complicated.” In make a complex startup, Peter Ehrlich doesn’t argue to make things complicated. In fact, he says to make them simple. And complex.

An idea must be complex inside (to the founders), for otherwise it is nothing and weak. It must not be complicated inside, for then the founders do not understand their own creation, and more time must be spent.

An idea must be simply represented on the outside (to the users). In a world rich with information, understanding something complicated is a heavy investment on the part of the user. This can only rise in correspondence with the popular belief of the worthiness of your product.

An idea that is complex on the inside, but complicated on the outside is ahead of it’s time. Users need catch up, so that it becomes more simple and obvious.

Some call this simplexity, the idea that a single button can connect to a complex series of events in order to start a car, run an elevator or buzz an intercom.

Taken from the other direction, I like the idea that to be useful something has to be complex. Otherwise there’s nothing left to make simple. In startup terms, you need to solve a problem. And if your problem is too simple, then it might not really be a problem.

The Laws of Simplicity get further into this topic, especially the law of differences, which says simplicity and complexity need each other.

My New Gig: Editing Programmable Web

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Big changes for me. My mapping API book goes to the printer this week. And, at the end of the month, I will join Programmable Web full-time as Executive Editor. I will manage a staff of freelance writers and do a bunch more reporting myself. We cover APIs and mashups of all sorts, with a healthy amount of mapping in there.

I’ve been calling this my first real job. I’ve never had benefits (other than from my own company) or actual vacation days–the sorts of things that most people are used to. Of course, it’s not “real” in the sense that I’ll work from most anywhere and have flexible hours.

I’ll also have a big challenge on a tiny team trying to do huge things. That’s exactly where I like to be.

The Simple Solution That Stopped Wandering Patients

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“Occasionally people slip out the front door and then they wander.”

That was the problem facing a senior center in Germany. Their patients, afflicted with dementia or Alzheimer’s, would walk away in a desperate search for a reality that only exists in their heads. The story is told in fifteen minutes on an episode of the Radio Lab podcast:

“He sat on an advisory board at the senior center. And one day he came up with this idea. It’s one of these ideas that’s so out there and yet so simple that you think it just couldn’t possibly work.”

Install a bus stop. Or, more appropriately, a fake bus stop. That’s all it took to stop the wandering patients and give the staff a chance to notice they’ve slipped away.

Do you have a recurring problem with your website, business, or personal life? Perhaps you need a fake bus stop, something that works with the other party rather than against them… and still ends up giving everyone what they want.

Unrut Yourself: My Six Week Side Project

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Almost every day I walk down to a local Mexican restaurant and spend at least an hour there. The same restaurant. Every day. I may have mentioned this before. If there is anyone who needs out of a rut, it’s me. That fact gave me an idea for a new side project, which I started work on in early December, six weeks ago.

Unrut Yourself - Portland pizza places

It’s called unrut and I think it’s a good example of a version one product. I included only basic functionality–there’s a lot of room for improvement. But instead of spinning my wheels as I attempted to finish a marathon list of features, I kept things simple. Users can search for places and then mark them as visited. What remains is a nice little organized list of places to try.

Using only cookies, the site remembers what you’ve marked as visited. So, if a place comes up in a subsequent search, you won’t have to mark it visited again. Would it make more sense to include user accounts, so that the site would work no matter what computer you are on? Yes. However, I trimmed this from the feature list for two reasons:

  1. It is not a necessary feature in order to get feedback from people on the concept
  2. Every site should let you sample, registration optional, so the cookie functionality will remain even after I include user accounts

And how about incorporating location-sharing sites to automatically determine where you’ve been? Yep, that’s a good idea. But creating a first version is about pointing your ship in the right direction, not necessarily sailing it all the way to your destination. Use the two simplicity paths to figure out the core and just launch that. You can always add stuff later.

Since posting a message about it on my Twitter feed this morning, I received good feedback. Some people asked for the things I already knew I needed. Others have said things that didn’t occur to me. That’s the power of getting a side project out there.

We all have side projects and I’ve written about many of mine on this site. I’d love to hear about your side project. And if you want help getting it done in six weeks, let me coach you.