21 Apr 2009

Gellin' for Great Experience

Saw two really great videos from the GEL conference aimed at understanding and implementing better experience for users and customers.

Seth Godin talking about how and why things are broken (from an experience and interaction perspective).

Jason Fried of 37 Signals talking about using Less to propel your business to greater success. The beginning is a bit muddy, but it gets pretty good from the middle on. My favorite part of the talk is the very end, here’s a transcript of the last minute of the talk:

Less software has less mass, and mass is a very important point, because just like in the physical world, the more mass an object has, the more energy it takes to change it’s direction. The bigger a software project is and the more code it has, the harder it is to change it. And if you can’t change your software, you’re going to die. […]

My suggestion to people is to keep your software small, less software, less mass, make it easier to change, and think about opportunities to embrace constraints. That’s the only thing I’d recommend more of: constraints. Less money, less people, less time, less abstractions, less software. That’s where you’re actually truly creative, in the space where you have constraints. If you have nothing constraining you, you’re not going to be creative because you simply don’t have to deliver. But when you have constraints, and you have less money and less time, you have to get stuff done. And putting yourself in a position to get stuff done is the best possible thing you could ever do.