elruso.com Blog

Is less always more?

May 4th, 2006

Dharmesh Shah at OnStartups.com disagrees with 37Signals (part 1, part 2) on the push for fewer features and fewer options. Be sure you read the comments.

The most interesting point is about non-overlapping feature sets that many people forget about:

Many can (and have) argued that nobody uses more than 20% of the features in Word. That’s likely true. The issue is that it is a different set of features for each user, and within that set, one or more features are very important.

However I think the need for customizability is overrated and 37signals take a right approach. Essentially it is a question of diminishing marginal returns: some people will undoubtedly benefit from additional options(large monitor example), but most people will benefit from the time invested in other aspects of the system.

Tags: web-20

Entry Filed under: Web 2.0