Less is More, Sometimes
Inspired by Mike McCue and Marcos Weskamp
New product development is less freeway and more single-track hiking trail. Progress is slow, each step deliberate, and the path ahead emerges as you go. You’re only as fast as the slowest hiker, so you can’t take too many people with you.
“Make every detail perfect, and limit the number of details to perfect.” – Jack Dorsey
As you traverse this meandering path creating something people want, doing less is your ally. Doing less creates the opportunity to spend the requisite energy on what matters, but by doing less, you are not guaranteed to get more. While the ‘peanut butter’ approach of tackling too much is a proven recipe for a forgettable product, narrowing your focus does not automatically mean you will have something great. By doing less, you can do better, but it doesn’t mean you will!
“We will spend hours and hours talking about a ‘close’ button in the corner of the screen and mocking it up, and going through hundreds of different design iterations on that before we settle on one that we like. That kind of attention to detail means that as a result you really can’t do a lot of things. You have to just do a few things, really, really well.” - Mike McCue, CEO Flipboard
In the early days of Flipboard I met up with Marcos Weskamp, then head of design. We walked to a local yogurt shop in Palo Alto to talk over some concepts. I expected to have a breezy conversation over one or two full-screen layouts. Instead, he proceeded to show me at least 50 versions of an icon he was working on. A single icon. I was stunned. Everyone says they ‘go wide’ and ‘explore’, but a rare few have the fortitude to live that ethos.
“Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods.” - Thomas Paine
Less isn’t automatically more. Yes, you get less by cutting features, but the more part takes deliberate effort. Doing less well means a lot more dead ends, missteps, trial and error, design iteration, and frustration. It means more thinking, more craft, and more care. The early Greeks were right, something doesn’t come from nothing.
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