Adam DuVander on keeping it simple
The simple solution is always the best solution. I believe that, but it’s a tough place to get to. Simple is hard. Worse yet, it doesn’t always involve some divine prophecy. Sometimes it’s educated guesswork.
The best way to do simple is trim to the barest essentials. If something isn’t necessary, lose it. If you took out too much, add it back in.
It’s good advice for Winery Web Sites, a basic tenet of extreme programming, and could be the secret to Beethoven’s Fifth
[…] Let me backpeddle a moment. The most important thing is to get together a first version. Make it have your core features. […]
[…] Now I don’t have to. We’ll see how the MetroFi quality is. We’ll see if ad-supported free service and a premium option is enough support. But at least it’s available. They’ve released version one and can always add features later. […]
[…] A short deadline encourages you to trim to the barest essentials. You probably won’t launch after seven days, but you have a really good prototype. After that, you let some people bang on it, round the corners, add in necessary-but-not-core-features. The more obvious the better. […]
[…] Trim to the barest essentials. Look around at what isn’t needed and tear it out. Reduce. […]
[…] Muxtape is a new website that makes sharing a mixtape very easy. I’m not sure you could trim features from it without taking away basic functionality. In that sense, it’s “basic.” But I mean it as a compliment. […]
Thanks for the link love, Mr. Duvander.
Simplicity is hard because it (a) forces us to make decisions, and (b) confront the fact that we might be wrong. What we don’t always remember is that making decisions moves things forward, and we learn the most from mistakes.