…Google would not be as big a success.

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.”
Albert Einstein

The founders of Google were PhD geniuses who wanted to create a more accurate search engine than what existed back in 1996. Not being web designers, they focused their energies on creating better software while design took a backseat. Luckily for them, they struck gold and have been mining the search goldmine for more than a decade. Google’s search product was simple, quick and offered the user exactly what they needed with no frills attached. Google has always been destined to win the search war and will continue doing so. Companies like Microsoft and Yahoo just don’t get user experience. Sure, they have big teams of designers and experts tackling user experience problems but i believe the approach of these companies leaves a lot to be desired. From the time Google got popular Yahoo has been stuck in an identity crisis shifting constantly between being a portal and a search destination. Along with Microsoft from the MSN.com days  these two companies have  piled on features that users don’t need. Even with Bing, Microsoft is going to fail. Their focus has been to make Bing a prettier Google instead of making it the most functional search product on the market. Google pushes it’s developers to improve every millisecond of user experience and reduce as many keystrokes and distractions a user sees on a page. Microsoft launched Bing with an image in the center of the page that is downright distracting. We go to a search engine looking for certain information. We go to other destinations like Digg, BBC and Twitter when we want to browse content. Lesson for Microsoft – don’t distract people by offering functionality that is not required. Yahoo on the other hand has and will always be cluttered. The web democracy has spoken and is phasing Yahoo out from its glory days. Jerry Yang didn’t fix it, Carol Bartz won’t. They’re business people who don’t understand their users. For the same reason Facebook was able to displace MySpace, Friendster, Hi5 and any other social network. It’s also the same reason why 27 year old Aaron Patzer, founder of Mint.com with his 30 odd peeps launched a product that startled 8000 strong Intuit. As Obama said: “You can put lipstick on a pig; it’s still a pig”.

The pigs Companies like Microsoft, Yahoo don’t get the importance of less is more and a positive user experience. Recently, another baffling example was that of Pepsi and Arnell Group. The leaked Arnell group documents showcase how changing Pepsi’s logo would improve their Cola wars market share against Coke. What bull crap!!! Pepsi and Peter Arnell broke one of the cardinal rules of branding – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Pepsi’s main source of income is people choosing their product over an exact product (fanboys don’t kill me – they taste the same to me) from Coke. Coke too is recognized the world over for their red background and white font. It is that recognition that offers their consumers a positive experience. It takes many years to build brand loyalty and only minutes to break it. By changing their logo, Pepsi offered their consumers a choice – to trust a new looking product or go with something that’s familiar to them. A while back someone told me an interesting fact about radio stations – certain awful songs with big budgets are often heard repeatedly on the radio and listeners through time adapt to recognizing the tunes and like that song. Fellow New Yorker Charlie O’Donnell just wrote something similar on his blog:

“2) Repeat the message as often as possible: “Pa-pa-pa-Poker Face”, “Ra-ma ra ma-ma”, “Papa-paparazzi”, “Let’s play a love game, play a love game”… Many of Gaga’s lyrics and sounds are repeated one right after another—simple, but memorable when listened to over and over again. Figuring out what your simple message is and repeating it across your site, your marketing copy, PR, and in business development meetings is a way to build brand awareness and clarity. Too often, I hear from startups all the things they could possibly be instead of hearing the one simple thing they want to be, over and over again. Your audience looks at a million brand messages a day and to cut through, you can’t be a different thing everytime someone experiences you—or worse yet, everything to everyone. Sometimes, broken records aren’t so bad.” Read more

A big difference between companies with successful products and their competitors who fail is the approach to user experience. At some of these companies user experience is an after thought and at others user experience comes secondary to product features. This is a huge issue with the state of product design today. Product decisions are often made by technical or business people. The goals of those two groups is different from that of a user experience team. Technical folks measure the success of the product with the number of features available. Business folks use metrics and marketing to measure their success. Measuring success in user experience today is more art than science. Most of us walk away from good products acknowledging the impact good design has on us. But, very few of us actually actively try and incorporate those same good design principles in our products. Similar to how a product without features cannot be successful, a product without a positive user experience cannot be successful. Here lies the biggest difference between monopolies and internet startups – if people have a choice, they will gravitate towards better user experience. If people don’t have a choice, they will use these products reluctantly. User experience trumps the extra features added to the minimum viable product. It’s true not just for software but for everything man made that we come in contact with. We’ve seen so many success stories in the recent past – Apple, Google, Mint – i don’t understand why it’s so hard for product owners to learn and improve their product design strategy.

Another issue I’ve come across while designing interfaces is the need to over complicate solutions by adding visual elements that distract the primary work flow. To counter that i offer one of my favorite design quotes: “Don’t make something unless it is both necessary and useful; but if it is both necessary and useful, don’t hesitate to make it beautiful.” -Design House Stockholm. Something is elegant if it is two things at once: unusually simple and surprisingly powerful. My plea to product designers everywhere – keep it simple. Don’t make me feel stupid while using your product and give me only what i need. Design intelligently – for “needs” not “wants”.

How do we fix this product design mess?

Get the three product influencing stakeholders (business, technical and user experience) together and form a review team – figure out the best strategy for your product. Most of the time the user experience team is part of the technical team. That forces the user experience designers to factor in technical and business issues too strongly and influences the final design output negatively. Get rid of that hierarchy while making product decisions and give all key stakeholders an equal footing while creating your next successful product.