Color Papers » Good Enough
Good Enough
Once upon a time... (a parable of sorts)
I love my little food processor My old food processor broke and I had to shop for a new one. I chose a huge shiny one with dozens of features: it could whisk, juice, chop, blend, grate, at different speeds, in different bowls. It was also a pain to assemble, impossible to clean properly and occupied half my kitchen. Three months later it broke. I replaced it with a very simple machine: it has off / on / pulse, does the 3 or 4 simple things I need, and has a 12 year warranty. I love my little food processor.
Nobody actually wants complexity - either in kitchen appliances or business. People usually just want to get a job done effectively, and quickly (and probably for the lowest possible cost). Most of the time what we actually need is "good enough".
Why do we end up with ridiculously complicated products and processes?
Design begins
Engineers consider the end users' experience & requirements.
The product or process is designed to achieve one thing really well: chopping potatoes for fries or reviewing staff performance.
Design is simple, elegant, outcome-focused.
Design continues...
Sales & marketing join the party (they're fun guys).
The design brief becomes 'everything the customer ever asked for' + 'everything the competitors offer'.
Design is no longer about what the customer really wants; it's hard to learn, hard to use... and a whole lot more expensive.
Design concludes
Regard the humble VCR
It was usually really, annoyingly difficult to record that episode of Who's the Boss? you were going to miss while out for dinner. Too many rows of buttons... stupid remote to figure out... All it really needed was two dials: one for start time, one for finish time. Simple, usable. Yay.
Good enough now > perfect & polished later
In reality, the simple, effective, intuitive system - if it gets the job done - gets used everyday. The complex one, the one that goes bing and has all the blinking lights, the one that requires a week's training to get your head around - that one might get used at some point down the road. By someone. Maybe.
We're fans of good enough
Sure our software does a bunch of tricky technical stuff. But we really REALLY like it when customers tell us it's straightforward, easy to use and does what they need it to do - it's good enough. Other cool examples:
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