Competing on easy • Hacker News Board

Re: Competing on easy

#21

Post by netcan » Thu, Nov 01, 2012, 11:56 AM UTC

jwdunne wrote: post #14

I think, as tech-savvy, I overestimate what users can do or feel comfortable doing. This makes making things easier a nice challenge. For example, a colleague needed to check if a link has rel="nofollow". The first solution is to right click on the link and click Inspect element (he uses Chrome). This wasnt a good solution because he gave up as soon as he saw code, despite it highlighting it for him. I wrote up a qui…

My first job out of Uni required me to write up little manuals, take them to the customer to show them how to upload products to their e-commerce site, check orders etc.

I'm not a programmer, but I'm fairly technical.

Anyway, actually sitting beside the user as they tried to do things makes you realize how important easy really is. This was using basically off-the-shelf software that I thought was pretty user friendly. But, anything outside of the manual and instruction could not be/was not done.

It isn't really about easy-hard. It's about possible-impossible. There was some Jobs interview somewhere where he described the early (then current) Apple/microcomputer progression in orders of magnitude.

people who could build their own computer from parts >> people who could build it from kits >> people who could write their own software on pre-assembled computers >> people who could use other people's software >> people who could use a GUI-based computer.

You could continue this line to ipad apps. How many people use computers but don't install software (daughters, IT departments, etc do this once per year)? How many use email that someone sets up for them?

Re: Competing on easy

#22

Post by fofmock » Thu, Nov 01, 2012, 1:27 PM UTC

I love making things easy, but I think the 37signals group may take things too far. Their book "Rework" feels like an entrepreneur picture book made for kids learning to read. I liked the ideas presented in the book, but I really wish it could have been just a little more detailed.

Re: Competing on easy

#23

Post by s_henry_paulson » Thu, Nov 01, 2012, 1:37 PM UTC

fofmock wrote: post #22

I love making things easy, but I think the 37signals group may take things too far. Their book "Rework" feels like an entrepreneur picture book made for kids learning to read. I liked the ideas presented in the book, but I really wish it could have been just a little more detailed.

I'm not trying to come off as negative, but did you ever stop to wonder if you're making things more complicated than they actually are?

Re: Competing on easy

#24

Post by casca » Thu, Nov 01, 2012, 1:42 PM UTC

fofmock wrote: post #22

I love making things easy, but I think the 37signals group may take things too far. Their book "Rework" feels like an entrepreneur picture book made for kids learning to read. I liked the ideas presented in the book, but I really wish it could have been just a little more detailed.

This is a great summary of "Rework". It felt like eating cotton candy - too quick and short on substance when the sugar high fades.

Re: Competing on easy

#25

Post by gravitystorm » Thu, Nov 01, 2012, 2:03 PM UTC

chrismorgan wrote: post #20

navitronic wrote: post #5

Not a huge fan of their blog's redesign. The combination of the serif font, text-indent on paragraphs and lack of separation between them makes reading it a chore. One of the first times I have needed to use Safari's reader mode out of necessity.

I didn't even notice the serif font, because I have overridden the font-family in almost all places to the Ubuntu font-family (hooray for user style sheets!). I tried it as an experiment somewhere around a year ago. I strike the occasional website that doesn't look right and where it looks like the typeface used may have damaged it, but overall, it's marvellous . I noticed very quickly that the whole web was prettier…

I've been doing this for a few years, along with a reasonable minimum font size. I find it really tough to go back to a smorgasbord of fonts and sizes, with some of them often unreadable. Controlling the fonts via Firefox is awesome.

The biggest downside to this is where sites (e.g. github) try using private-range unicode codepoints for graphical icons, not realizing that users often have other fonts set. I really discourage site authors for hacks and stick to using graphics for icons.

Re: Competing on easy

#26

Post by yesimahuman » Thu, Nov 01, 2012, 3:14 PM UTC

fofmock wrote: post #22

I love making things easy, but I think the 37signals group may take things too far. Their book "Rework" feels like an entrepreneur picture book made for kids learning to read. I liked the ideas presented in the book, but I really wish it could have been just a little more detailed.

I definitely see that. To be honest, I really enjoyed how tersely presented the ideas are. They make a great jumping off point for your own internal discussion and creative modification.

Re: Competing on easy

#27

Post by navitronic » Thu, Nov 01, 2012, 9:43 PM UTC

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #15

navitronic wrote: post #5

Not a huge fan of their blog's redesign. The combination of the serif font, text-indent on paragraphs and lack of separation between them makes reading it a chore. One of the first times I have needed to use Safari's reader mode out of necessity.

Interesting, totally opposite for me. The text-indent is what demarcates the paragraphs and I found that really readable. Also Safari's reader mode also uses a serif font, for me anyway.

It's the combination of the three factors causing the issue.

Re: Competing on easy

#28

Post by gregormck » Mon, Nov 05, 2012, 10:50 AM UTC

dantiberian wrote: post #2

Does anyone know what it is they're building? I'm struggling to think of a market that is dominated by free that could also be made easier. Email seems like a possible bet as all the other major email providers are free.

I reckon it is a timing app