No one makes fan clubs to celebrate the electric light. Even so, if power were to suddenly be cut off around the world there would be chaos.

Cell phones are generally ignored, except for when they stop working.

When designing products remember that the biggest sign that you are moving from niche appeal to mainstream utility is transparency. The less your users are forced to worry about how to use your product, the more likely it will be that they will use it.

The Product Trap

A trap that product designers often find themselves in is believing that every problem can be solved by another feature. Throwing features at your idea without understanding the root causes of your customer’s woes just leads to a product with more parts to break. Google has 100,000 mini-features, but other than Gmail, Adwords and normal Search almost none of them have made the jump into the mainstream.

Why? Because people don’t want to figure out your vision.

Thats why great products almost always follow the same mold.

• They solve a clearly defined problem.
• They do one thing well.
• The UI simplifies instead of confuses.
• They are incrementally made more complex.

Web 2.0 Roundup

When building products, look to create utility — not flash. If your web widget requires 5 hours of experimentation before users see value, chances are you are going to lose them. If you put five extraneous features between your users and their goal, chances are they will find another solution.

The selling point of the electric light was that all you needed to use it was a switch.

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