I have previously written about non-linearity and how it messes with our reasoning. In business non-linearity abounds. One example that has been discussed a lot is the change between going from a price of 2 cents to 1 cent compared to the change with going from 1 cent to free. Twitter wouldn’t be twitter if it had charged just 1 cent per tweet. One area where this is also true but more subtle and less well understood is product simplicity. Steve Jobs is clearly on to something very powerful b...

I have previously written about non-linearity and how it messes with our reasoning. In business non-linearity abounds. One example that has been discussed a lot is the change between going from a price of 2 cents to 1 cent compared to the change with going from 1 cent to free. Twitter wouldn’t be twitter if it had charged just 1 cent per tweet. One area where this is also true but more subtle and less well understood is product simplicity. Steve Jobs is clearly on to something very powerful b...

At the airport in London this morning just before getting on my flight back, I read John Batelle’s epic complaint about his usability problems with Apple software. That got me thinking about my 30 years of experience with a wide variety of software systems. And there seems to be an ironclad pattern: successful new systems start out simple and easy to use. Just two cases in point: the early web and the early iPhone (note that I am not saying “beautiful” or “elegant,” as the early web was anyth...

At the airport in London this morning just before getting on my flight back, I read John Batelle’s epic complaint about his usability problems with Apple software. That got me thinking about my 30 years of experience with a wide variety of software systems. And there seems to be an ironclad pattern: successful new systems start out simple and easy to use. Just two cases in point: the early web and the early iPhone (note that I am not saying “beautiful” or “elegant,” as the early web was anyth...