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March 07, 2006
Complexity hurting sales
Andy sent a link to an article from Reuters on Yahoo! that states Complexity causes 50% of product returns.
The average consumer in the United States will struggle for 20 minutes to get a device working, before giving up, the study found.Product developers, brought in to witness the struggles of average consumers, were astounded by the havoc they created.
The problem with those of us making products is that we get used to complexity that we found incomprehensible initially. When we are making something ourselves and can take the time to get to know it, we work around many of its strange idiosyncracies. Then we end up legitimately surprised when no one new to it can make heads or tails out of our creations.
Powerful, yet simple and unsurprising, is hard to do.
Posted by Mark at March 7, 2006 09:23 PM
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