Less Is Less And An Advantage

Have you ever been involved in a project that has spun out of control? I mean a few months passed the deadline? Change after change after change? It’s hard right? You get tired, you work long hours but you feel like it’s just never going to end because it’s just THAT out of control.

Well, why did it get out of control? Was it your fault? Was it a problem with the process? Probably a mixture of these things, right?

I’ve been working on releasing an iPhone app for the last few months and a lot has gone wrong with the project that I won’t get into here but this project has made me think a lot about the saying “Less is More”. A lot of people have spoken about this and I’ve since fallen into agreement with the guys at 37 Signals that say “Less is more is bullshit”.
When it comes to product development I’m offically a firm believer in “Less Is Less AND it’s an Advantage”.

Let’s break this apart a bit.

Less Is Less

What does this actually mean? We’ve all heard “Less Is More” but what does more mean? Many believe it’s better. But whyyyyy? I started thinking of all the products I use and many of them really only focus on one or two things. They offer less features and overall they do less BUT the thing they focus on….man do they do it well. A few products I use that offer less functionality but kill it are:

iPhone Reminders – this is the new Reminders app on the iPhone. Many companies have been trying to figure out the best productivy/organizational app for a long time. We’ve seen Omni Focus, Remember the Milk, Things and Wunderlist. My personal favorite of all of these has been Wunderlist until Reminders came along. Reminders is essentially a digital version of my notebad. I can add items, pick a due date and now even tie a location to a to do time. That’s it. Simple. It even looks like a pad. BOOM. I love it!

ByWord – I’m using byword right now to write this post. In Full Sreen mode its one of the best apps I’ve seen that just lets you write. Better yet, it lets me export my writing to all the formats I’d ever need; PDF, Word, and HTML. It’s super clean and simple and does only what I need it to do.

A few others that I wont go into detail on are Twitter, Basecamp, Foursquare and TouchBase. But they all have a niche offering and focus on being the best in that niche. It’s worked out very well for all them.

It’s An Advantage

So why is offering less an advantage? Your competion is offering more, their product can do more blah blah blah. As we made our way through this app development process I wish we tried to do less with our app. Feature after Feature got added and it’s become a bit too much. Talks of where this app will go and what it will do in the future has me concerned with just how useful it will be if it gets too complex.

As the guys at 37 Signals said in their post, Less people can lead to less time which can lead to less distraction. If you know your product only has to do one thing well it becomes much easier to create the contstraints that keep you focused on doing one thing the best while your competition continues to add layer after layer of complexity.

We are all so busy these days and there are so many distractions that it’s become amazingly refreshing for me to use a product that only does one thing really well. I end up multi-tasking way less and even become more productive.

So by offering less you could put yourself in a position to beat your competior. Sounds pretty sweet huh? What products are keeping it simple for you? What are your favorites?

How can you try to make your next project do less?

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