"Simplicity Sells"

Hi all,

I’ve came across to this podcast few days ago, I watched it several times. After I watched this podcast many times I related the things pointed out in this with our beautifully MODx!, several points come up in my mind and I am going to say them here:

1. The main point of this podcast is "simplicity" and even author specifically mentioned in the end "Simplicity Sells". He is quite right IMO, I can see people love 37signals products, they created their products with minimal "important" features in them. On the other hand, we can use MS’ products in any way we want, but we don’t do it or at least people are getting bored of it. For example, I am very much fan of MS, they develop a product in which you can do more and more, but I’ve had some document conversion job, Word to simple xhtml and guess what... it was just nightmare for me to handle 100s of documents converting Word to simple xhtml by hand!.

2. Author gave an example of Palm computer. I’ve never used it personally though, but my friend had the mobile phone with similar features and a touch screen with a little stick to operate it, so I have an idea about what the author talking about. He said, that the manufacturers of the Palm computers have "Tap Counters" (hope I spelled "Tap" right), he said if somethings needs more than 3 taps to open/operate, its too long and need to be redesigned. (wow)

3. Some examples of Simplicity: IPOD: it has no fancy features like we FM receiver, voice recorder etc. (once again I’ve never used the IPOD), it simply do what it is made for.
Google: Very simple, and IMO the shortest possible homepage on the earth ... you can see Google’s other products for example, GTalk etc.

On Conclusion: He gave 3 tips:

1. Easy is Hard, pre-sweat the details for your audience.
2. Count the taps
3. Hard part is not what to add, but what to leave.

Last word, Simplicity Sells!

Now, with MODx...

Create a very very simple interface (Google, 37Signals etc.), we can inspire from Mac/Palm (no no.. I am not Mac user yet, but they are better anyway ), include very important features inside, try to keep the things on finger tips ... (tap counting comes in mind).

One more thing to mention and I believe is very hard to achieve, is Intelligence as he described at: 00:10:00 of the video podcast.

This is what I wanted to share with you all, your thoughts on making MODx better and simpler .. oh.. and Intelligent are most welcome!

Here-here! I’d love to loose about half the configuration options and just make the right/reasonable/automatic choices when possible. I’d also like to see things like the user profile disappear. Focus on a super-lightweight core and make it usable (but extendable and able to be overridden).

Quote from: rthrash at Sep 07, 2006, 03:37 PM

Here-here! I’d love to loose about half the configuration options and just make the right/reasonable/automatic choices when possible. I’d also like to see things like the user profile disappear. Focus on a super-lightweight core and make it usable (but extendable and able to be overridden).

Sounds like a great idea for vertical distribution of the core + a bunch of "simplified" user interfaces (manager, default content, config options, etc.), so they don’t see all the possibilities behind the scenes.

Quote from: zi at Sep 07, 2006, 03:34 PM

3. Some examples of Simplicity: IPOD: it has no fancy features like we FM receiver, voice recorder etc. (once again I’ve never used the IPOD), it simply do what it is made for.

Not quite, but it is a good example to compare MODx to. An iPod does lots of things; even early versions have had a decent Solitaire on it. It has been sold as simple, everyone knows it is a music player, but it is capable of much more. The marketing (the selling) has been focused. The product itself is not simple, but the core function is - it is designed entirely around reducing the "taps" required to play music, change tracks etc.

Google’s core function is search, so the home page is just the search box and a few links.

The question one must make, of course, is what the core function of MODx actually is!

The three taps principle is a sound usability benchmark for all parts of MODx, and actually I think you can already get to most parts of MODx in three clicks - the tricky part is to make it simple for a user to comprehend so that they make the right 3 clicks the first time.

I very much agree with you Zi (and thanks for the Podcast link BTW).

I think simplicity is the key to people’s need in an over-informed world. We simply have too much information to process, and most of the time the idea of having a boat-load of features is just showing that you did not design your application with the actual user in mind. MS Word is a good example : most people use about 20% of its capabilities, which is plain normal since it does 80% of the job (I kind of think Pareto’s principle is still true).

As you point out, 37signals has built his success upon simplicity, just like Google has. This takes a lot of work to select which items in an interface should be there, and at which level it should sit. It’s all about making choices for your user, that they won’t have to make. You make it simpler for them.

I am no UI or HCI specialist, but I’d sure love to work on revamping the MODx interface, with the "Don’t Make Me Think" principles in mind.

MODx already is a great content management framework, but it would get even greater if we did some thinking starting with a blank slate, taking usability to the next step. I had looked up the CMS User Interface Guidelines, and this is an area of great interrest to me.

when designing the GUIs for your CMS, you should always have the following aspects in mind:

* Your target area of application,
* the role this part of the GUI is designed for,
* the (all!) tasks that have to be performed in the scope of this role,
* the task and work environment.

For more details see http://wiki.openusability.org/cms-uig/index.php/Main_Page
There are a few interresting ideas on this page.

Another source is the famous UX Matters.

Anyway, this was some first thoughts, I’d be glad to discuss this further, and take an active part in the redefining process for the UI.

Quote from: OpenGeek at Sep 07, 2006, 04:36 PM

Sounds like a great idea for vertical distribution of the core + a bunch of "simplified" user interfaces (manager, default content, config options, etc.), so they don’t see all the possibilities behind the scenes.

Now that is an interresting concept !
One of the important thing I think is the ability to dumb-down the interface, having different layers of complexity. I’d be more in favor of one UI though, with the ability to switch on the fly between interface detail-level. Even when you’re say, an admin, at times you’ll wear the editor’s hat and just need simple editing.

Anyway, when you talk about vertical distribution, I guess this is 1.0 we are talking about, if I understood correctly we’ll be able to build the manager as any MODx page today ?

Quote from: PaulGregory at Sep 07, 2006, 04:53 PM

The product itself is not simple, but the core function is - it is designed entirely around reducing the "taps" required to play music, change tracks etc.

Exactly !
It’s all about user experience, and good user experience requires a lot of thought from the creator of the product. If we manage to brainstrom like Apple guys do, we sure could give MODx a huge boost !

Quote from: PaulGregory

The question one must make, of course, is what the core function of MODx actually is!

I’d be tempted to say MODx is to the web creator what a palette is to a painter : a set of apparently simple tools that can combine to produce endless possibilities

The core function, to me is : enable creation, empower the creator.
One thing I love about MODx is how it makes work turn into play. (and now I am saying to myself, let’s keep this one for marketing purposes )

Good links.

So. "Your target area of application", "the role this part of the GUI is designed for", "the (all!) tasks that have to be performed in the scope of this role, "the task and work environment."

This is workflow, this is a role-specific UI - this is tailored simplicity.

The problem that the MODx manager has is that it is covering all sorts of roles.

When we have the manager written in MODx itself, we can adapt it for these specific needs. Or (dare I say it) provide a framework for developing content management Managers...

What an excellent podcast! And great summary, Zi

The funny thing for me was that, yesterday, I went to an Intranet usability conference here in the UK and the main keynote presentation was by a chap from a usability consultancy called Gerry McGovern. The exact same message, ’Simplicity Sells’, came out of that as well!

Time and time again it’s being proven that killer apps are created when they are developed with the top 5-10 features/functions in mind (those that deliver 50-70% of the overall benefit) - I think it was Ryan who once made reference to 37signals having the idea of epicentres (it was a while back when we were discussing the repository) which is a parallel concept.

I just had to share that, it’s just really uncanny to see the same messages coming out from so many different places The even better thing is that MODx, with Jason’s great work on the core, is just so capable of delivering this (and more!)

Anyway, I’m off to watch a few more podcasts on that website ...

Quote from: davidm at Sep 07, 2006, 04:56 PM

If we manage to brainstrom like Apple guys do, we sure could give MODx a huge boost !

Quote from: garryn at Sep 07, 2006, 07:40 PM

killer apps are created when they are developed with the top 5-10 features/functions in mind (those that deliver 50-70% of the overall benefit)

MODx is potentially both "killer app creator" and "killer app"; it is both a working CMS and a framework for custom CMSes.

I would be interested to hear some brainstorming on what people think are the top 5-10 features/functions of MODx. Most of the descriptions of MODx focus on the benefits rather than the features/functions.

To my mind, the biggest bar to developing for MODx at this point is the user management system. Documents are easy, templates are ridiculously easy, but man! Just try to do anything involving users! So I would say #3 is a user management system with a good API for integrating with other systems. The csv insert is a good start; any user management system should be able to import/export the user database to .csv.

#1 template management
#2 content management
#3 user management
#4 database management
#5 file management

What else is there to do? Just about everything revolves around those basic elements.

#6 might be the installer. This can (or should more likely) be extended to include an in-system package manager ala SMF or Squarespace.