Anthony Milner

The success of blogging is in large part due to its simplicity. Most blog software requires you to do very little in terms of setup, just add content and your thoughts are elegantly displayed in a consistent and easy to navigate format. 

Another product that has experienced great success as a result of its simplicity is Basecamp, developed by 37 Signals. As the 37 Signals mantra suggests, Basecamp is an, “Elegant, thoughtful [project management] product that just does what you need and nothing you don’t”. At work we use Basecamp to manage multiple projects and I am yet to find a team member that doesn’t use it. I’ve used complex project management software that makes you coffee and takes the dog for a walk but isn’t touched by anyone working on the project except for the Project Manager. Basecamp has distilled the most important components of project management; communication of ideas, tasks, milestones and documents and made it child’s play to use.

MS Office is probably considered one of the biggest culprits in terms of featuretitis but Office 2007 has made a massive leap with the introduction of the “Ribbon”, a dynamic strip which endeavours to present only what you need (and what you didn’t know existed). Additionally Word 2007 has introduced the Blog Post feature which means I can use Word to create, edit and post blog entries without going near the WordPress editor.

This trend can also be seen in the number of companies approaching us to build web based applications. Besides the obvious benefits of “use it anywhere”, the browser environment is understood by the end user and can be easily modified/adapted to meet the needs of respective audiences.

We’ve probably all had enough of the “What is Web 2.0?” debate but elegant and thoughtful design is certainly a part of it.

I’m reading Dan Saffer’s book “Designing for Interaction – Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices”. In the web space Interaction Design is a relatively new field. It’s a bit of an umbrella term that incorporates information architecture, user experience, graphic design, interface design and usability. In my experience with application development projects, the ones that concentrate on the interaction design on par with functionality are the most successful. It doesn’t matter if we build a kitchen sink or a simple widget that goes “ping”, it’s the interaction design that is often the difference between user take up and user rejection. The unfortunate reality is that application design is all too often driven by business priorities which usually translate to function over form and getting as much as possible done within the allocated timeframe and budget. The emphasis is on “we need it to do xyz” as opposed to “we need it to look good and be easy to use”. As practioners in this space we need to fight the good fight for interaction design because a great outcome for our client is important and its our best opportunity to market our capability and win more work.