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The thing that people get wrong about the idea of "less is more" is that they choose the wrong features to eliminate. They don't have a strategy, except that th
by ahoyhere 17y ago
The thing that people get wrong about the idea of "less is more" is that they choose the wrong features to eliminate. They don't have a strategy, except that they will do and be less. (And it's often the HARD things to design and build that they leave out.)
They focus so hard on elimination, that they don't add back things that the other apps do not have.
AND they think that they will still have universal appeal. They don't consciously say "OK, we are going to remove these features, because we don't want to serve this type of customer... which will make us more appealing to another type of customer."
They just think that less === more, and that's it.
Just like any dogma, people cargo-cult it. They use it as a mantra without understanding why.
FWIW, my app was one of the ones featured -- Freckle Time Tracking (http://letsfreckle.com/ http://letsfreckle.com/). They wrote:
"Freckle just makes you want to keep track of your time. The conveniently condensed interface shines with energetic color, turning a routine task into something fun."
And that, in a nutshell, is much of what we tried to achieve with Freckle. Our key feature? Take away the pain. Take away the guilt. Make it effortless, and dare I say it, fun.
We don't have everything, by choice.
Do we have fewer features than Harvest? Damn straight.
We don't do time sheet approval. We don't do pre-approved tasks. We don't do any kind of extreme permissions control.. anyone in the account can create new projects, for example.
Our software is built for small teams with a flatish hierarchy, not for traditional iron-fist-control businesses.
That is LESS with a purpose.
For our customers, that's not a "lack of features" -- it's a downright BONUS. Because they have a small team, or are by themselves, and so having to set up tasks in advance (like in other software) actually reduces their ability to work effectively.
On top of all those removals, we've added back things that nobody else does. Time entry on every page. The Pulse, which helps you identify your work patterns. Saveable reports.
Even most of the people who cancel their accounts write us that they love the app and they're sorry they have to cancel.
So I certainly feel we're doing something right. We don't want to be Microsoft Word. Our goal isn't just to make gobs of money, or even dominate the niche. We want to build software that fits our philosophy and makes people happy.
We have a smaller audience, yes, but it's an audience who agrees with our principles.
- Pistos2 17y agoJust wanted to mention that I am a happy Freckle user. Good work. Just add in the ability to mark items paid or unpaid, and Freckle would be just about all I want out of a time tracker. (With paid/unpaid, I would be able to see what I can or want to invoice next, considering various subprojects proceed on different timelines.)
- ahoyhere 17y agoHi! Yay! :) Don't worry, we're working on our invoicing attack plan. And marking reports as invoiced is step #1. Our #1 feature request has been a timer, and we built one. (Have you tried it yet?) #2 is invoicing. We're building that next :) It's just a little bit slow because A) I am a perfectionist when it comes to defining the initial approach (and it serves me well), and B) we're doing the part-time 37signals thing. But we will get there... soon, hopefully!
- fauigerzigerk 17y agoI'm sure you're doing something right. If you have users you're definately doing something right. But do you really think that the only way to make one group of users happy is to simply exclude functionality that would make another group of users happy? Is this an unsolvable problem in your opinion? I tend to agree with TomOfTTB that it is a UI challenge that can be met.
- ahoyhere 17y agoIt's not about excluding features to make people happy, it's about designing something right from the ground up. I didn't take a mental image of a time tracking app and then remove stuff. I started from scratch. Different groups of people have different use cases, and different needs. It's a fallacy to think you can design one thing for all people. It compromises your vision. Make sense? And yes, by the way, there are lots of things we are able to do with Freckle because we have decided paths that we do not want to tread. For example, project creation is always on-the-fly. It's so elegant I could cry. But if we added permission restrictions, based on who could create projects, that would take away the elegance, and add confusion. In the end, our approach -- which is awesome for our desired audience -- would be totally compromised by the additional error-checking and rigamarole if we were to add this as a feature. Thus, we won't do it. There are plenty of people who don't need or want that, who are our potential audience. And people who do need it, won't like the other assumptions our app makes. They will be better served by more traditional products. To my mind, this is win/win/win.
- berntb 17y agoLet me limit this to web applications. To me this discussion sounds like an argument for user controlled scripting languages in web applications. This is needed since web applications which use lots of Javascript can't be automated by normal web scraping libraries with no Javascript/DOM emulators (they support cookies, etc so they can do sessions etc). Something like the classic Applescript, for user control. (Or maybe the latest web frameworks already have that?) Edit: Reformulated sentence for clarity. Edit 2: I think the plugins for Firefox etc are too hard to write? Maybe you could add scripting languages to them?