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Jan

2011

Jack Dorsey On Charlie Rose: “It’s Really Complex To Make Something Simple.”

techcrunch.com/...jack-dorsey-charlie-rose

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simplicity

Twitter Chairman and Square founder Jack Dorsey sat down with Charlie Rose last night to talk about Dorsey’s unique position of being responsible for two technology startups based on the idea of simplicity: Twitter and Square. Watching this interview you realize that Dorsey’s accomplishments have little to do with luck, and more with his focus on creating the purest products by throwing away any unnecessary flourishes. “It’s really complex to make something simple,” he tells Rose.

Dorsey describes himself as an “editor” who edits technology and teams “so that we have one cohesive product that we tell the world.” In the clip above (provided by the Charlie Rose Show), Dorsey talks about how he got the idea for Square and how hard it is to make mobile payments no more complicated than swiping a credit card.
“When you’re using the iPad, the iPad disappears, it goes away. You’re reading a book. You’re viewing a website, you’re touching a web site. That’s amazing and that’s what SMS is for me. The technology goes away and with Twitter the technology goes away. And the same is true with Square. We want the technology to fade away so that you can focus on enjoying the cappuccino that you just purchased.”

Feb

2010

Simplicity is hard. Let’s go shopping! [dive into mark]

diveintomark.org/...icity-is-hard-lets-go-shopping

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simplicity lifestyle

As part of my pursuit of happiness, I have been steadily shedding attachments, getting rid of things I don’t use, thinking about ways of keeping the things I do use longer, and just generally being a pain in the ass. This, for instance, is an actual conversation I had with my wife last fall:

Aug

2009

Practicing product minimalism - garry's posterous

garry.posterous.com/practicing-product-minimalism

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minimalism simplicity

I clarified: "Well, features aren't always right. Sometimes they're done wrong, or they don't really fit what the user really wants. Do we ever remove features?"
Features got removed in other ways though. If nobody really used them, they were obviously chopped out and memorialized as a bullet point in the release notes. But that wasn't really my question. Those are the easy ones to chop.
3 more annotation(s)...
- A product gets bloated not because the obviously bad features stick around. They're bloated because there are features that are barely OK in there. They're not complete. They aren't done correctly. Maybe the UI is wrong, or the internal states aren't thought out well enough, or don't match what the user expects. And there are egos attached, too. A poor PM's ego, at the least,and maybe a dev and a tester's self worth too. An entire feature team might have emotional stakes in that feature.
- This can be avoided. Go deep on the things that matter. Do less with less. Be minimal in scope and maximal in completeness.
- Minimalism to me isn't necessarily DOING less, but PRODUCING less. Sometimes coming up with a solution that is simpler takes more effort, because bloat is easy to accomplish for the sake of feeling like you're doing something worthwhile.
  Come to think of it, my most successful projects have been ones with an exact, clear objective. One action that helps benefit the customer immediately and directly. Things that have garnered critiques saying "that's too simple; it's stupid."