Comments on: The Rise of Simplicity in Product Design and Customer Relationships http://danblank.com/blog/2007/11/24/the-rise-of-simplicity-in-product-design-and-customer-relationships/ Tue, 02 Dec 2008 12:39:38 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.2 by: Taylor http://danblank.com/blog/2007/11/24/the-rise-of-simplicity-in-product-design-and-customer-relationships/#comment-32702 Mon, 26 Nov 2007 19:13:50 +0000 http://danblank.com/blog/2007/11/24/the-rise-of-simplicity-in-product-design-and-customer-relationships/#comment-32702 Sounds nice in theory but maybe we can acknowledge that this simple thing is really hard and that the examples we tend to think of aren't so stellar with flaws of their own. Nothing is simple about the fact that every 5 days or so I get an update notice from Apple about my iTunes and/or Quicktime. I hope I don't need them b/c the simple thing to do is just skip them (and so I do). And I'm not sure how simple is that my iPod just fails one day and now it's dead. Is "simple" now buying a new one - my old cd players works perfectly (simply) after 10 years. We could try to stop using "simplicity" with every critical discussion of a product/experience. There certainly seems to be something interesting about the Zune's intentions, or lack thereof, that gets neglected when we sum it up that it's just not "simple" - were they just piling on features b/c buyers tend to crave bells and whistles and getting more for their money? Were they trying to provide new, unique capabilities but misunderstood what their audience wanted? I dunno. I've bought so much Apple stuff that my switching costs are too high to try the Zune. Sounds nice in theory but maybe we can acknowledge that this simple thing is really hard and that the examples we tend to think of aren’t so stellar with flaws of their own. Nothing is simple about the fact that every 5 days or so I get an update notice from Apple about my iTunes and/or Quicktime. I hope I don’t need them b/c the simple thing to do is just skip them (and so I do). And I’m not sure how simple is that my iPod just fails one day and now it’s dead. Is “simple” now buying a new one - my old cd players works perfectly (simply) after 10 years.

We could try to stop using “simplicity” with every critical discussion of a product/experience. There certainly seems to be something interesting about the Zune’s intentions, or lack thereof, that gets neglected when we sum it up that it’s just not “simple” - were they just piling on features b/c buyers tend to crave bells and whistles and getting more for their money? Were they trying to provide new, unique capabilities but misunderstood what their audience wanted? I dunno. I’ve bought so much Apple stuff that my switching costs are too high to try the Zune.

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