Give the Gift of…Goat The Last Day, More Often
Dec 29

This Christmas I had the chance to spend some time with people a little older than myself, and I was able to witness them interact with technology.

First, my dad was trying to order me a present from Nike’s web site. After a couple of attempts he threw his hands in the air. I finished the transaction for him.

My mother-in-law, bless her heart, gets over 90 pieces of spam per day. I installed Cloudmark on her machine and she now gets almost zero spam. While fixing her spam problem, I also corrected her view preferences in Outlook, removed the useless, expired, annoying, virus-like Norton “anti-virus” software and during that time, helped her open a tab delimited file in Excel. All tasks she had no chance of completing herself.

I often wonder: How does the normal Joe, like my parents or in-laws stand a chance in this technological age? Web sites, computers and common gadgets have to be so unbelievably annoying to the non-technical person.

My prediction (and I’ve made it before): Companies, like Apple and 37signals, who are determined to offer products that are great and SIMPLE, are going to win. Stop adding features to your products and invest instead in usability. The simpler the better.

And, oh-this goes for web sites as well!

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