Design Tradeoffs

At work, there are several instances where I've had to make decisions on what features are in and what are out for a product. There is always an (un) healthy tension between the forces of mass customization vs. the forces of one-size-fits-all or the forces of blue sky 50K foot view vs. what can be done in the next couple months. The answer(s) are invariably somewhere in between, but attempts at simplicity usually give way to eventual bloat and/or products are delivered later than desired.

The road to simplicity and good intentions is paved with trouble. Why? Because, people fundamentally have good intentions. They want to do a good job, be it engineers, product managers, designers or end-users. Asking people to work harder, or do better, or simplify processes is like asking them to have better intentions. It just doesn't work. What's important is to have a mechanism in place that will make this endeavor more predictable. There are three things that one needs to keep in mind for a complete process:
a) Automate actions, with minimal or intuitive user-inputs (poka-yoked to prevent confusion and mistakes)
b) Adoption: Make sure that what you build gets used (after all, why bother building something that is not used?). Set up appropriate monitoring and measurement metrics (key success criteria) and expose them. This, in addition to features, helps with adoption as it raises the overall level of awareness for your product.
c) Don't forget to audit or inspect the results - too many processes suffer from assumptions that change and an audit usually keeps people honest.

I've started to apply this technique when designing something new and have found this to be a good way to ensure better results. This idea isn't novel but it's seldom put in practice, so it's worth enumerating. In my past life as a consultant, there was a variant of this that I followed, which was very useful. It was called MECE or "Mutually Exclusive, Comprehensively Exhaustible" principles. However, the mechanism and complete processes is easier understood and applied.

In the same vein, I happened upon this article that also talks about simplicity in design and how one owes it to oneself to prevent bloat. That is necessary but not sufficient for success. What's needed is a complete process and a mechanism to make it work. So, go forth and simplify and make sure you're not solely relying on good intentions.