Simplicity Sells
Do features sell software? When you create products that can do more than your competitor’s products, does that give you the advantage?
David Pogue, the personal technology columnist for The New York Times, has an interesting, and very entertaining presentation on designing both hardware and software that is easy to use, not necessarily packed with features.
If you are a software developer, you should definitely check it out. Our hope is that with TryBeta you will get the feedback from your potential users before you release it to the public. This way changes that you have to make can be done earlier and before you leave a potential bad impression with the public.
This is also one thing we are trying to accomplish with the design of TryBeta. Recently we were working on some design issues with the Developer’s administrative area. We want to make sure it is real easy to use, even though the people who will be using this section will already be experienced computer users. We cut some features that did not fit into the design and will add them later on as we get feedback from developers.
We’ve added a few new enhancements today though. I’ll have a longer post over the next few days which will answer some common questions about the site.