Title: Experience Rot
Context: Feature creep = User experience rot
Synopsis: The high point – user experience wise – of any software is its first release. This will be the simplest, most economical, singular realization of the product vision that will ever exist. After that it becomes a race to the bottom of the feature backlog adding nothing but complexity and smearing the product’s original design purity in a thick paste of Frankenstinian excrement. OK, that’s probably a bit too strong of a condemnation for a product who’s very lifeblood is a robust, iterative modulation of the original MVO. We must continue to grow and evolve and change our opening vision lest we rot on the vine outward from inertia, a fate at least equally as bad as the inward rot of directionless, manic turnover. The designer’s most important job just may be to find the product’s fulcrum and struggle mightily to keep both extremes in equilibrium before one crashes into the dirt and the other is propelled aimlessly into the sky.
Best Bit: “The best way to fight experience rot is to say ‘no’ to everything except the most essential of features.”
via uie.com
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