Simple is Beautiful
We may seem so advanced. But the well kept secret about human beings is that we are really simple creatures. We like simple stuff we can understand quickly. Life’s already way to complicated. Want to reach to us? Don’t make us think. Keep it simple, please.
This applies everywhere. Marketing. Pitching your business. Writing. Talking. And is especially true for us building product companies. Products thrive on simplicity. Solve one problem, and do it really well. Don’t make users think.
Less really is more. So let’s hear ‘em.
1. You will not lose parts of your message – you’ll win. Please tell us what you are doing, or building, in plain language. Drop superlatives.They might make you feel smart. But nobody buys it. Revolutionary, innovative and next generation just reek of BS.
It may seem to you that by simplifying you will lose part of the message. The truth is just the opposite. It is the complex messages that get lost, because we just won’t get it. Or if it’s written, we just stop reading. And we won’t tell you we don’t understand. Oh no, we don’t want to look stupid.
Adeo Ressi from the Founder Institute has come up with a super simple way to pitch your business in one sentence. This is how it’s done: “my company, _(insert name of company)_, is developing _(a defined offering)_ to help _(a defined audience)_ _(solve a problem)_ with _(secret sauce)_”.
At the end of 2011, Robin Wouters asked startups around the world to pitch their company to him and Adeo. Marvel at the simplicity of the winning pitches.
2. Make 1 point. If you need to explain, use up to 3 arguments. What do you want to tell us? What is one thing you want us to remember? Make your point as soon as you can. If you have one simple argument to support your message, great! 2 is good, 3 is most we can handle on a good day. iPad is thin, light, and fully loaded. Gmail makes email more intuitive, efficient, and useful. Evernote helps you capture everything, access anywhere, find things fast.
Just look at the Google home page. No explanation needed. Go.
3. Smart people know simple is advanced. They know that it took lots of work and iteration to get there. Look at product development. Your task is to create a product that will be loved by many users. They have different needs and tastes. The obvious thing to do is keep adding specific features as they are requested. The right thing to do is to work hard to see beyond individual requests, and develop a strong vision of a better world for your users. And then relentlessly measure, seek feedback, and refine, refine, refine. Look at writing. Every word in a great book that reads easily is read and examined at least 10 times. Often by many different people. And much of the initial text is gone.
Simple is therefore not simplistic. Einstein knew it too.
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler”. Albert Einstein
Is simplicity important to you? Please share your tips, I’ve been obsessing about making things simple lately, especially when it comes to my product. And there is so much to learn.
Thank you for the one-sentence pitch quote!
As a mobile developer I am in the constant battle between the need for less clicks (i.e. switches between screens, navigating the UI hierarchy) vs. need to have clean UI and less stuff on the small screen.
I found that having important operations coded in different color helps the users and the support. So “press the most-right button in the title bar, the one titled ‘Submit’” becomes “press the green button”.
Ha! Never thought of it, mobile does force you to simplify. I also find that constraints are a great source of creativity. Proven by your creative solution with color coding!
One thing I’ve learned as a teacher is that simple is not simplistic as you said. When you communicate something, you have to be sure the person can understand. To do that, you need to build your message on top of elements that you know the person understand. But it is not enough, you have to imagine how she thinks, what is her perspective. You have to put you in her mind. It is very hard to help her to understand something new without giving the “the end”. She has to get by herself, i.e. to build new schema of associations of concepts, of thoughts.
So, simple doesn’t mean to be unprecise or rough. I think you have to be very precise, and select the only necessary elements to help the person get your message. The good choice of those elements and the way you use them make the message simple for the person. If you need a lot of elements to explain something, split the explanations in several pieces. Don’t mess everything together.
As conclusion, simple is only a matter of point of view IMHO.