Original post: June 3, 2011 | GoogleScholar | Academia.edu

Simple products break less

In working with engineers of all kinds, whenever my modest inputs are required to help ship better products, I like to say this: “Let’s make this feature work like a drum!” This expression is not my own – I “inherited” it from a good front-end developer friend, but it represents a principle in product design that I follow (more on that later). And believe it or not, it all started with cars and drums and LSD… as in Lean Software Development. Since we happen to be humans (even the geekiest of us), it often helps to remember why simplicity is the mother of genius – because simple things break less. This notion is at the core of great products and customer experiences.