Make It Bearable
I’ve observed a proven pattern for success in the software industry. You can implement it in three easy steps:
- Identify a product or service that is unpleasant to use.
- Make said product or service bearable.
- Monetize it only if you can do it without breaking Step 2.
It’s hard to overstate how much more polished Google’s overall user experience is than that of its predecessors. If you’re like me, you probably don’t remember what search was like in, say, 1997 because hindsight has consigned all memories of that period to some deep recess of your mind. A short history: First the web was pure, then some marketing exec thought it would be cute to offer you $20 if you could hit a rapidly oscillating cartoon monkey as it danced across the seizure-inducing background of a banner ad. Google set a high usability standard and, in large part, made the web bearable again.
That’s the most conspicuous example of this pattern in action, but standalone software like the excellent Firefox web browser also makes skilled use of it. Again, the focus is on making the unpleasant tolerable (let’s leave making things pleasant for a future lecture). If you’ve used IE, chances are good that you’ve been bombarded by popup ads, cluttered your desktop by trying to view many sites simultaneously, and seen web sites resize your browser windows or play tricks with your status bar. In Firefox, the standard settings offer the least annoyance. Plain and simple.
