I reached an inevitable milestone (unplanned) that sneaks in toward the end of a project. "Wow, I can' believe we've done all that work and ended up with this. It's...it's...so obvious. It seems way to easy. Too simple." This normally lasts about 10 minutes. But now I know what it means. We've understood the problem and solved it correctly. We reduced something complex and chaotic to utter simplicity. I know this is true because things only become obvious once they are unveiled. It's the unveiling that takes all the work.
The project of mention is Black Tonic, and by all means we kicked, fought, and screamed for simplicity: features, software design, development roadmap, interface, brand aesthetics. Why? Because we believe one of the core tenants of Design is elegance. And, most importantly, we strove for simplicity because we had to. It was simplicity or death (for the product, Black Tonic, of course).
But how do you actually create a process and guidelines that achieve Simplicity? Well, for one thing, we don't do "design". We invent and build. But we did enforce a strict process in order to build right, which is a design process. There's no magic and we're by no means masters, but here's a rough list of the constraints we set up:
Limit your Resources
- Time
- Budget
- People
Avoid Comfort
- Human Nature is to adapt. Comfort kills creation. "You get soft."
- Twitter, with no income to date, has a staff of 60+. Really?
- All our friends have sexy office space. We are tucked away in the corner of shared/collaborative office space. #nofrills
- Your structure needs to lean toward feeling unstable, like an object in motion. But not too much.
Feedback
- you change what you measure. Therefore measure for the core components you're building.
- It's not that you need to listen, you need to ask the RIGHT people the RIGHT questions
- And you need to know when not to listen. Like during the 4th quarter or Overtime.
- We refused to invest resources of any quantity until we had the results of a measurement that allowed us to make decisions about resources to invest.
Technology is NOT the Solution
- Sometimes your solution is a process, not a technology.
- Don't lose site of the problem for the tools.
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That's a rough list and doesn’t quite feel complete. What do you think - Should simplicity even be the point? If so, how did you achieve it?
P.S. Black Tonic is coming soon... Check it out and get on our newsletter list: www.blacktonic.com
Black Tonic is a software as a service solution that provides the simplest means of managing and delivering presentations on the fly. In a nutshell, Black Tonic allows individuals to dynamically control content on a web page in real-time by synchronizing browsers.
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