K-I-S-S: Keep It Simple, Stupid. It’s a mantra that always pops into my head when I’m looking at new startups. A lot of them seem to want to do a million different things because other companies have been successful at one of those things in the past. But that’s a bad idea. Way too many new products and services are too complicated. And I would suggest, often fail as a direct result of that.
On the face of it, it makes sense to give users a lot of options when it comes to features, and let them decide what to use and what not to use. But decisions can be a burden. And further, users are often bad decision makers. It may be blasphemy to say that users want to be told what to do, but at the very least, they want to be lead in a direction.
And that’s important. Because it’s not like a lack of decisions has to be limiting. Take, yes, Twitter, for example. It started out as a service meant to share what you are doing in 140 characters or less. But it quickly evolved well beyond that — into something that the creators never intended. Messages to other users, links to interesting articles, disaster reports — these all go way beyond simply saying what you are doing, but they still work within the parameters set by the creators.
Since its inception, some people have been saying Twitter is silly. Those people aren’t necessarily wrong, but even they must admit that it has done one thing very right: Keeping the service simple. How many calls have there been to add this feature, or add that one? We’ve all done it. Yet Twitter (yes, perhaps aided by the fact that it lacked the spare engineers in the early days during its constant crashes), stayed the course and kept its product extremely simple.
That, in turn, has led to an entire ecosystem of third party applications that now run on top of it. And Twitter, the little service that everyone was calling silly just a couple years ago, is now clearly having a direct effect on huge web services — like Facebook.
Let’s talk about Facebook for a second. The number one reason I started using Facebook rather than MySpace several years ago is that it was so much neater, cleaner — yes, simpler. But with an explosion in growth, came an explosion in features. And, in turn, an explosion in complexity.
I’d argue that’s one reason why we see so much backlash when Facebook makes design tweaks nowadays. It really is pretty hard to master using Facebook, and a lot of users (and developers) have put a lot of time into just that, only to have the rug pulled out from under them with some fundamental changes.
These changes require more work be put in to learning the system again, and that takes away from Facebook’s core value: Using its network to find information about your friends. Not surprisingly, that pisses people off.
On a much larger scale, I’d argue that it’s the same trap Windows falls into. Microsoft simply cannot fundamentally change it too much — even though plenty of people would argue that it probably should — because people would go wild. We saw this happen a bit with some core changes in Vista — though, to be fair, Vista’s performance I think hurt it more than anything else.
Instead, Microsoft is stuck in the cycle of adding new features to a product that is pretty much the same as it’s been for at least a decade, if not longer. New features placate some users, but ultimately, that cycle is a losing proposition. And Microsoft makes it worse by offering a bunch of variations of a similar product where it’s not really clear what the real differences are.
If you must add new features, I think a much better approach is the one Gmail recently began taking with Gmail Labs. Rather than roll out new features to everyone while it waits for the inevitable backlash, Google makes them opt-in only, through Labs. This way, it really is the user’s fault if they don’t like the change — and more importantly, it’s easily fixable. Simply turn off the feature you don’t like.
But let’s go back to the core of simplicity. Simplicity can often mean beauty. Just look at what Atebits has made with Tweetie, a very simple Twitter client for the iPhone and now for the Mac. There were plenty of other Twitter clients out there first, but Tweetie, in my opinion, is much nicer because it’s simple. It’s not trying to do too much. It’s not trying to pull in my Flickr feed and my Facebook feed. It does one thing — and it does that one thing very well.
Another example is Instapaper, the web bookmarking service I use several times a day. Here’s how it works: You drag a bookmarklet to your toolbar, then when you find something you want to read later, you click it. Done. You don’t even need a password if you don’t want one. That’s brilliant because it means I don’t have to keep signing in over and over and over and over again as I do with a service like Delicious. Do I care if people know what I’m reading? No, I couldn’t care less. That password is a burden for the service.
Instapaper’s creator Marco Arment was smart enough to realize that even though there were plenty of bookmarking services out there first, he didn’t need to match them feature for feature. All he needed was to make something that is very good at what it does. He did, and in the process has eliminated the once dominant Delicious from my life.
Going back to Facebook for a second, its most recent redesign was on some levels an attempt to simplify things; to make its stream more Twitter-like. The problem is that Facebook is a series of complicated rules and relationships beneath that, which makes its simplicity just a facade that gets exposed when you start really looking at it. Just try changing the apps that can post to your profile stream. Go ahead, I dare you. I say that because it’s a nightmare of switches and levers. If Facebook really wants to simplify things, it’s going to need to change a hell of a lot more than its main feed stream.
Another service, FriendFeed, also recently redesigned its site (the beta version), to make things simpler. I think they did a good job of it. And while some people did not like it at first, most seem to like it now. While it’s not actually all that much different (aside from the real-time data flow), it looks cleaner, and they made it easier to follow what you’re supposed to be doing.
One of the applications that has recently been added to my regular rotation is FourSquare. Why? Well, mostly because my friends use it. But why do they use it? Because it’s simple. On its iPhone app, it takes two clicks to check in at a place. Or you can send a text to do it. Why do people like Digg? It’s simple. You can submit something. Or you can just vote. Or you can just read.
I think that for most startups, I should be able to describe to you, the reader, exactly what a service does in one sentence. Sure, you may think the service is stupid (like plenty of you still do with Twitter), but at least I can easily explain its core functionality. With some startups today, it seems like it’s a mess of “well, it’s this plus this minus this with a little of this if you do this.”
One kickass feature far outweighs a dozen half-assed ones. Focus on that one.
![Yes, This Is How I Want To Search TV Shows [Video]](http://cache0.techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/sidebar_feature_1358_1257471084.jpg)
love the beta FF. and Facebook is a mess.
Facebook makes privacy and app settings too cumbersome that virtually everyone stays in default settings prescribed. They literally killed “app boxes” (remember?) by taking it out of default. No secret.
K-I-S-S is important because girls use only simple things, not just geeks. And geeks and guys will eventually follow girls which makes it mainstream.
Facebook sucks. It is becoming more and more complicated day after day. And every new apps only adds to the pain. Filtering friends/updates becomes difficult and you’re let out in the mainstream. How I wish FB people read this!
Writerkols said…
Facebook sucks.
Don’t use it. Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t hold a gun to your forehead and force you to use Facebook. The other option is, develop your own social networking site such as Facebook that is not sucks. It is free-market Writerkols, take it or leave it.
which just goes to show that for every complainer, there will another complainer about their complaint.
Falfulu Fisi, that’s a pretty strange response. If you don’t like Facebook, you should either completely stop using social networking sites or create your own? Yeah, let me just contact my local investors and get it going.
What a great thought Falafulu Fisi!! If you don’t like something or complain about something, you should either leave it or go ahead and make another one like it! So, if you don’t like something about TechCrunch, I shouldn’t voice my opinion but make another site of this stature. Lol. (Is someone ready to make another a facebook-like site without messing up things?)
Yes, another great example are all the Boolean operators that search engines require in order to do any type of advanced search. So if I am interested in searching for a pdf file about java the coffee from a .org domain, I need to add all sorts of logical operators or go through the daunting advanced search page.
A perfect example of a simple approach is Yauba http://www.yauba.com. I use it because it does not take advanced operators, but still I can just find what I want because guides me through.
You see mate, you did not keep it simple in your site.
The basic user of a search engine does basics searches. That’s why google is KISS big time.
The fact that i can refine my search immediately in your search engine makes it more complicated at first sight.
Beside your design and color scheme, although very pretty, is far more “complicated” than the google one :”Black font on white background”
KISS is an art…
I’ve developped a software to help elders and novices shrink images and send them by email(No mum, no more emails with 5 images of 5mb : )
The software as only three buttons and a viewport, but it took me 2 months to realize.
Simple is for the end user, for you designer, it will be hell ;D
Keep up the good work and thank you MG for this article.
Most of the time “Less is more”, and Facebook is doing exactly the opposite adding more and more features, leading to complexity and clumsiness.
The ‘KISS’ mantra is necessary, but I would add ‘DICEE’ mantra as well to launch great products: Deep-Intelligent-Complete-Elegant-Emotive.
Examples: iPhone, Google Search, Mac, Tweettie
MG, I think you should have taken your own advice when writing this article. A great point laboriously made. Keep-It-Simple-Stupid.
ha, fair enough. should have kept it to 140 characters.
in 140 characters:
Hey Geeks, KISS. I’m talkin’ to you Facebook. It’s not an arms race.
pwned
dude. didn’t you leave TechCrunch 5 days ago?
“The quality of your publication is a joke. Goodbye.”
So what gives? Do you enjoy TechCrunch or hate it?
Just leave if you hate it so much.
Dang. You should have changed your anon name.
well you could, actually, do it with 21 characters by only having the title of the article
Oh snap.
Good article, appreciate the irony though
yes…this article is so dead on perfect
we could always use a fresh reminder.
when my startup hits mainstream everyone is gonna be saying who knew? mg “smart” would have been to interview locator dude when you were in la yesterday.
WisdomLocator.com – some like it smart
Do you think spamming TC is the way to get your start-up noticed?
Speaking of simple things, one of the bad examples is mashable
Yes, but not simpler than what people need to get what need done.
great article. great little case studies. and oh-so true.
and from an M&A perspective, companies with focus and simplicity are often much easier to sell.
Smart people stay away from scopecreep type companies
Very good essay! You should read the book Simplicity by Edward de Bono. I still think Facebook can reorganize it self and focus on managing their Framework/Social Graph and allow A FEW very useful apps to run on it.
I would like you to read my essay about it http://oonwoye....k-i-am-serious/
Kilon Se le? Keep up the good work.
Yo Oo, wassup?
What has happened to your friend Anjali from Delhi? I have not seen here for a while. How is her new romance with Mike Arrington, does anyone know?
You guys chased her away. maybe she is living happily ever after with Mikie
I miss her though
Simplicity by Edward de Bono – Great book that one. Highly recommended.
Good Post. I am a Product Manager and I know how hard it is to achieve “simple” design – interface wise and beneath the surface.
Unfortunately, most product fail to achieve this goal for a simple reason : they don’t want to. They are unclear what is that one kick ass feature [as you call it]. Without the clarity you don’t have the belief and you end up making up a bloatware that is lousy.
nice post . good observation of the gmail labs. google does KISS everytime to the extent of making it boring (see the blogger templates by google) but who the hell complains ??
It should be features AND simplicity and not features OR simplicity .
You are so right but it takes courage with a capital C to streamline features because you need to face so many people who think they know better than you and don’t necessarily see the big picture.
Courage…
Totally agree. Simplicity is key. Not sure what Steve Carell has to do with it, but excellent choice of picture none the less
KISS was a part of at least one Office episode, maybe more
…plus it looks like he’s pleading with you to “Keep it simple stupid!”
That’s what she said.
It’s true, the more Facebook tries to do and the more it adds, the less I want to use it. I spend more time on Twitter and FriendFeed these days. Now, if we could only consolidate the two it would be perfect
Hey MG, would like to take your opinion about my concept http://rivals4ever.com. I guess it is culprit of not keeping it simple. Any ideas how can I keep it simple.
Looked at the site. Quite a nice concept. Will register soon and gun down my rivals online!
It’s so true. Facebook for instance keeps adding on more stuff and the less I like it. I’d much rather use Twitter or FriendFeed.
Great article, even thought it is easier to say than to do.
When one or more entrepreneurs get together to create a better product/service, many ideas come across them, and it is natural that they all want to create the best product/service. And this implies in brainstorming all the possible features that it might include.
But it always good to read articles like this and remember that we can’t deliver the same thing for everyone. I couldn’t agree more about Microsoft complicating things, and with Gmail and Instapaper simple but great approaches.
I use facebook and twitter a lot and personally, I find facebook a little bit more effective than twitter. don’t know. it’s a personal preference.
but i like this article very much because it makes a whole world of sense….keep things simple, that’s the key. I do this with my writing and get headaches when people try to use too many BOMBASTIC words to IMPRESS others.
to me, that’s like, adding too much salt into a simple dish. spoils everything!
good article, keep it up!
What if, in the pursuit of simplicity, a service actually becomes more complex as a result? Check out the latest tweet in my stream: “RT @deakaz: @stephenfry Is right, about the swineflu! We can’t let Twitter earn a bad reputation http://bit.ly/Y2GDh (expand) #swineflu”. This may look normal to the average reader of this site, but it’s absolutely horrifyingly complex for the uninitiated.
When features have to be accessed through command words, the service has become too complex for the average person. I’d venture to say Dos is the simplest OS I’ve ever used, but I still prefer OS X.
MG, I’m so very glad you also find Facebook complex and, at times, confusing. Every time I’ve said I thought so, people have given me strange “are-you-serious?” looks.
Great post.
End users need low learning curves they do have lives on their own that doesn’t revolve around learning the ins and outs of your sw.
Right on the money….
Great point. KISS
Out here in India, Orkut is the most popular social network. Till a few months back most of the people had not heard about Facebook.
Now what Orkut does is to move away from its simple interface and allow user customizable skins and adds a lot of features turning it into too many things for too many people.It also takes longer to load on the slower internet speeds available in India.
Suddenly there is this huge spurt in people switching to use Facebook and now most people I know use Facebook more regularly than Orkut.
So even though Facebook has made a few changes lately, it still was much better off than Orkut, which made itself practically unusable.
I do not have the numbers on this, but I think Facebook and Orkut would make a great comparison.
Agreed. Now there is such an inflow of users from Orkut to Facebook in India. And those Orkut users who have entered FB, have not totally banned Orkut. They play on both sites and explore FB more as there are more apps to explore there. Also, there is not much spam/fake users in FB as in Orkut. That maybe yet another reason.
Test
Dude, test passed again.
Twitter is master of simplicity and we all can learn from it. I used to really like Facebook until I didnt force my self to try Twitter. And got stuck there.
Facebook is like huge party which ends up with over drinking and over eating. Next day you just want a soup and glass of water. And it feels really good.
I like the comparison. FB is just that. FB is a party where you are asked to dance with a heavy, nine-yard, body-dragging, grossly sophisticated dress so much so that at the end of the dance, you are totally exhausted and feel wretched. Twitter is the light sandwich made of bare-minimum things. You can take it in heavy doses and yet not swoon.
FB is a party in a cumbersome dress, and it didn’t always use to be that way! They really should consider that the more complex they make it, the more backlash they are going to receive from people signing off.
I’m also wondering how long twitter will stay as is, and what the next big thing will be in 6 months.
Alright, now I’m gonna go ‘eat a light sandwhich’ and let other people know about this post
Exactly!!! Let them know to keep it simple, if not stupid.
Where facebook wins is simple even in their complexity. No matter the growth of Twitter, I am not going to share pictures of my friends and family in a large open broadcast. That is not because I do not like the conversations and people I am connecting with on Twitter, it just is not going to be an appropriate environment. FB needs to simplify their protocols, but in the end it has a much greater control set for user confidence. Perfect no, but better.
Simplicity in software design is a mantra by now and much of what you say makes sense for the wide area of consumer and prosumer applications; for those applications that want to deliver a limited feature set and that are only used infrequently, that makes perfect sense. You imply large target audiences.
On the other hand there are desktop applications that need to achieve complicated ends: I’ll use the Adobe set of programs (Photoshop, Illustrator, …) or Apple’s Final Cut Studio as examples, but I’d also include all the engineering, architecture, and advanced 3D apps not commonly known. They are used by much smaller audiences that make their daily living using them as tools to create complicated end products, such as full length, professional video, engineering designs or commercial artwork.
I’m waiting to see what will happen when these tools start migrating to the web, as they have begun to, although in ‘baby’ steps. While you can find a web service for any small fragment of a problem by now, there are few tackling any larger problems.
Any opinion of where simplicity needs to give way to more complex designs? What would be an example of a more complex web app you like? Do you think these will migrate to the web or will new web competitors move in to take the place of older established players on the desktop?
My company provides Google Apps Setup. Pretty simple.
Completely agree.
The first book I read when getting into my startup endeavours was:
http://gettingr....37signals.com/
And it is one truth after another. The key takeaway from the book is to keep things simple. The less you do the less you need to maintain, the less bugs you will have and the less confusion you will cause to users. On top of the that, the less you do, the more attention you can focus on the key features of your app.
Create your basic service and from there grow it based on user feedback. Even then, not all user feedback needs to be included, rather the most requested ones or the most fundamental ones should be added and others should be ignored because with every feature comes an overhead – maintenance, support, etc.
Great article!
You’re quite right, and because of this I increasingly believe the ‘winner’ in social networking is going to be the site or application that is the best aggregator.
Additionally, it will have to be simple enough for all to pick-up-and-play, but have a complex (and tweakable) enough backend to keep early adopters and coders happy.
Friendfeed has the right idea, but it’s just too daunting for Joe Public.
Great article. Has prompted me to give the inbound linking system I am about to launch, just one more little once-over to make sure its simple and straightfoward to use. Thanks.
Hey MG, great article, I’m actually surprise to read it on techcrunch, I’m use to those stories on Usability Blogs, really good article. So talking about Usability, I’m looking for a way to mail some of you Guys, Michael or You MG for a story submission, but somehow, no email, no contact, just twitter and comment, any suggestions? btw, it may be a very interesting story, and you will love it, you really will, hope you will give it a follow.
and yet as soon as people use something like twitter or friendfeed, they start asking for features to be added
In addition to Twitter, the best example of K.I.S.S. I can think of is http://onlineclock.net
KISS = Keep It Straight, Sweetie
Good point, Nebbe. Profiles and DMs were often requested on FF until they were added. Siegler seems to think Twitter was highly tractable (which it wasn’t), and that using some no-password, web-bookmark is simpler than using the browser’s built-in bookmarking. This whole post reads like regurgitated "copy pasta" and is quite a waste of time
Just sayin’.
Very good article. I’ve felt this quite a lot with the internet lately, and have been trying to simplify my own time online for my own sanity. So I definitely appreciate when companies help me do that.
Two cases and points: Google Docs and Posterous. Google Docs is pretty much the only word processor I use right now. Why? Because it has all the SIMPLE features I need and I can access my documents from anywhere!
The other is my new love online: Posterous. They have done to blogging what knife did to bread forever ago. I LOVE blogging and I love easy, so thank you, Posterous! (Oh, and when you do begin to add new services, please do it opt-in, Google style.)
I always say that a microwave is the best example of engineers ignoring the KISS principle. In my usability class I often ask students to try to start the microwave in 15 seconds or less, they almost all fail … why? Because there are too many options and those options are poorly designed. I’ve told my wife it’s the same reason that I don’t do laundry, honest.
KISS is all good…the question is at what price? Evolution? The KISS concept will always fail when dealing with the ‘new’…until we understand the ‘new’ and we make it KISS friendly…
We had similar issues when we created our browser-based Twitter Client http://lmframew...vd_twig_short_1
We wanted to hide a lot of functionality behind an almost childishly simple interface, and allow users to drag and drop as much as possible.
Judging the feedback, it looks like we did ok.
Instapaper is nice but I think readbag has the better feature set in terms of KISS
It’s good to see that the tendency to evolve apps into bloatware is remaining more in check.
Several years ago we went from happy WebEx users to sad WebEx users when the app got excessively bloated and became complicated and slow. We switched to GoToMeeting, which has remained relatively simple over the years — that has served us and our customers well.
Simpler; Faster; Cheaper; Fun; Informative; Prestigious.
These are the six benefits from which any successful product or service needs to offer at least two.
See http://www.four...efits-pick-two/ for more on this.
Great article, BTW! I especially agree with the Facebook horrow. Did you know there are at least four different ways of posting messages for consumption by others and all of them are in different place, post to different areas and are called different things. Why??? Just give me one message panel and allow me to check boxes to indicate where the message should be sent!
FB post 2005 is a complete train wreck. Sad that they do not listen to users.
“Do I care if people know what I’m reading? No, I could care less.”
It’s “I couldn’t care less.” It is not “I could care less.”
Sorry, that mistake is a huge pet peeve of mine and I just can’t let it go when even writers screw that up.
Yep, thx.
Newsconomy (http://newsconomy.com/) is another bookmarking service.
DKITSKISE – don’t keep it too simple, keep it simple enough
UTCATTSWP – understand the complexity and try to simplify where possible
“When in doubt, leave it out”
That’s what I used to do, but I kept getting arrested.
hi you my/ m /Iran /18 / my love you and all
Nice write up
hey, you almost copied the title of my blog: keepiteasysimple
And yes, I agree with you, that the future of WEB will be : Easy Simple, Super Easy, ….
Fantastic post. MG, would you mind if I translated it to portuguese to post it into my blog? (of course, giving you guys all the credit.