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Constraints and Focus

All the talk about Apple's latest Qtr results got me thinking of how this applies to my life.  

Apple focuses on a specific market.  In this case it's the market for the iPad where it's 1) mobile (couch, car, where ever), 2) only fingers required (this means that all controls / action must be selectable with finger resolution) and 3) very very simple to use (flattening out of the applications logic, etc).  To this end they provide 80-90% of most peoples needs.   No overly fancy UI, no extra features that most people would never use and no real concern of what is actually in the iPad (chips, speed, ports, etc).  Just a device that provided a generic solution for most people.

For software it's really about the same ideas, providing a solution to your target customers as simply as possible.

CONSTRAINTS

Apple has constraints as they work with hardware and the limits of currently battery life, screen displays, etc.  that force Apple to unique solutions.  Bailing on Flash was one of the boldest moves I've seen in a long time and limiting multi-tasking.


In software there are very few constraints to limit the problems we create for ourselves.  We tend to confuse UI design and features with providing solutions.  A good UI design can make a solution better but by it's self a UI design does not solve customer issues.  I tend to design for a solution first (MVC of course) and then I'm free to work on the UI knowing that I've already solved the clients issues.

FOCUS

Apple's focus can be viewed as removing features until to come to a base set that is absolutely required, and then making those features very simple.

In designing software it's easy to keep adding features to 1) make up for not knowing what solution to solve for (the scatter shot method) or trying to solve too many issues at one time and 2) to keep ahead of competitors features.  Both of these concepts are re-enforced through the media in reviews where it's easy to show a checklist of features, where the product with the highest hit count should be better.    This is where focus is required.  If there are too many features at the start of a design then the features can draw too many resources (meetings, mockups, tests, etc) away from the core operations and behavior.  This can slow a project down and muddle the core solutions of the product.

Again you can look at competitors to Apple and see where products have been laden down with features in the hope of drawing consumers away from Apple.  Simple and effective will always win in the long run.
  

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