The 80:20 rule states that you can achieve 80% of your results in most areas with 20% effort. Conversely the last eighty percent of any effort only moves the needle by a small amount. This turns out to be a trueism that applies broadly in many walks of life. But does it apply to user generated content? Is eighty percent of the content created by twenty percent of the users?
Mike at Plum pointed me to the following short article published in the Guardian yesterday. It makes the claim that one percent of people create new content online, ten percent comment on other peoples’ stuff and the remaining ninety perecent simply view it.
One important way to get more people to engage in creating online content is to make it real simple to learn and use the new tools and applications. But I wonder if “real simple” isn’t being translated to “real simplistic” a little too often. If new applications solve real problems and help people simplify their busy and complex lives, communicate more efficiently, discover more relevant information and entertain themselves in the process, then wouldn’t they make an effort to learn how to use the new tools?
So the big question on my mind is: do you make a new online applications simple to the point of being simplistic in order to try to get lots and lots of people to at least try it out… or do you ask people to make a small investment in learning how to do something new that might have a big positive impact on their life?
-hans peter
This is incredibly inspiring. Make the small investment in making people learn how to do something. Small investments can yield big results. Too simple and you often regret what could have been.
The answer? I don’t know. But… I sit and watch the kids today and I think to myself, “they get it, they’re smarter than I think, don’t worry about making it so easy”.
Myspace is a great example. It’s not usable. Slow, poorly navigatable, yet, over 100 million users are on it, and the kids like it. Go figure.
101% = 90% + 10% + 1%
Don’t you mean 1%, 19%, and 80%?
I just graduadet on Interaction Design and we just had a big discussion about this subject with a couple of (now ex) classmates.
It kind of depends on who you are making your software (or more abstractly ’system’) for and what your goals are. In short I think you have to smartly build in a learning curve.
“do you make a new online applications simple to the point of being simplistic in order to try to get lots and lots of people to at least try it out… or do you ask people to make a small investment in learning how to do something new that might have a big positive impact on their life?”
So I think your question is ‘wrong’, because the one does not exclude the other. Take Google, it is still easy to search on Google, but you can also do a lot of other more complex stuff on Google, but that will take some extra time and effort.
So I in general I would say; Yes make it as simple as possible to do the most used feature and build the rest of your application around that focussed principle.
I think the purpose and the audience will define how simplistic to make it. I initiated some communities of practice where I needed rapid adoption to get critical mass, yet had no budget for training: simplistic was the go. Now, with a critical mass and support I can move to a more sophisticated channel. Mind you, the way generation Y’s operate, simplistic may be too simple for them!
these is quite interesting i gonna use it