Quite often Less is More - especially in product development

When doing anything, doing a few things well compared to a lot of things in a mediocre fashion, is often the best way to go, for the following reasons:

- Simplicity: Comprehension by others is crucial in most things and the simpler it is the more chance they will get it straight away. You can always add more features to it once everybody loves it.
- Focus: Spreading yourself too thin leads to mediocrity, and a bad product.
- Iterations: Most people do not get it right first time, and delivering 'less' quickly so that you can fix it quickly and make a better product is almost always the best path.

I will use an examples to explain:

- Google is the classic example: They completely wiped the floor with every other search engine at the time, by simply making the search result more relevant, using their algorithm. That was it, one function done well. While every other site was not making search substantially better, and instead creating lots of portals and composite sites to add to their search engines.

- Wii: Nintendo dominated the market by simplifying the games and making the controller easier to use, by younger and older 'kids'. All other games consoles were concentrating on higher end graphics and more complex games and more games.

- Firefox: Firefox brought with it faster browsing

- iPad: When Apple brought out the first iPad, there was an enormous amount of people that mocked the product because of its lack of features, you could not modify things, it did not have a word processor etc. etc. Exactly, it had a few things in it that it did really well. Mail for example of the iPad when holding it in a landscape fashion is by far the best email interface. It is so easy to use when going through a lot of email, that it is tremendous. Placing all of the icons on the screen like a lot of people do on PCs with their desktop, was another simple yet well thought out and delivered feature. I believe that in the next release of the Apple operating system Mac OSX, both of these concepts will now be the standard on the Mac as well. It is not about the number of features, but how well the few are thought out and delivered.

- Marketing - Finally, I would argue that the two most important thing in marketing or selling anything, is understanding the one thing that your product does well, that fits the one thing that your customers want. It is never about the total feature set, however it is always about the quality of the fit of the thing that is unique about your product.

Seth Godin in his latest book 'Linchpin' describes the fact that 'you must deliver'. Where I agree with that delivery is crucial, don't make the mistake that you need to deliver a lot of features. Instead focus on delivering just enough, but do the just enough to the highest quality you can do while still delivering. Seth describes this as being an artist, and delivering art, I prefer to think about delivering less and delivering the best few features as good as I can make them, and this is what Seth describes as art, and being an artist.

This is also where I see Agile methodology implemented in the worst way. Where people just think that because they are delivering something every 2 weeks, that they are doing well. For success, delivering small chunks of features well, is so much more successful that a lot of features not so well, and worse that no-one wants.

So the next time that you are designing a product, concentrate on 'less is more' and make sure that you deliver only the 80% of functionality that people need and you spend the time to deliver it well. Do the usability reviews, and usability testing and get the few features working really well. If the few features are good, one of two things will happen, you will start getting people saying that they do not want it any more complex, and it hits the mark, or you will have happy customers that are begging for more. Either way it is a win, and you have delivered less, so you will probably deliver it faster, and with less problems.

The other option where you try to deliver the full 100%, you will not have time for usability reviews or testing, you are more likely to run overtime and budget, and your customers may not understand the product or like the product because it is too complex or simply has too many moving parts, and they switch off.

Go for the simple 'less is more' option and make sure that that piece is as good as you can deliver.