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October 7th, 2009
In his New York Time article, “Where Yahoo Leaves Google in the Dust,” Randall Stross shows how Yahoo’s embrace of the “Less is More” philosophy is helping it compete with Google.
The article says:
James Pitaro, vice president of Yahoo’s audience group, said, “In our research with users, we found that the more information that was displayed on the page, the greater the anxiety.”
He said Yahoo deliberately adopted what he calls “the Apple model — simplicity in design; a clean, simple look, not overburdening our users with too much information on the page.”
Google seems to pay no heed to such psychology. Google Finance, which was introduced in 2006 and shed its “beta” label earlier this year, hews to its original strategy: offer the best data and charts. And when that doesn’t work, offer still more data and charts.
Filed under: Google,Less is more,Yahoo
July 31st, 2009
The Jitterbug is a cell phone that is often describe as “the phone for Seniors”–the company behind it likes to say it’s for “any generation” or “for Boomers and beyond.” Either way, this company gets it when it comes to consumers. Especially in the “less is more” category.
The headline on its newspaper advertisement reads, “It doesn’t play music, take pictures or surf the 
Internet.” Bravo! This company understands that for many consumers more features means more complexity, a harder to use product and in the end more frustration.
The company also understands that less is more when it comes to consumer choice. You can get the phone in White or Graphite. That’s the only product decision. No need to choose memory size, feature sets, carriers, etc. Pick the color and your done. Again, fewer decisions means fewer frustrations.
While many tech-savvy consumers are racing to smart phones there is a whole world of non-tech savvy consumers (young and old) who are being dragged into the technological world that has emerged over the past few years. These consumers should be given technologies that add to their lives but do not cause frustration.
The Jitterbug is meeting this need (and in the process its been getting praised by the industry and the press for its feature set and ease of use. Recognitions include the 2009 Wireless-Life Sciences and Triple Tree I Award for “Best Consumer Experience” and very positive comments in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and the Washington Post.)
It would be nice to see the philosophy behind the Jitterbug phone applied to more products–either by the folks behind Jitterbug or by other companies.
(Disclosure: In the past, I have done some advising for the PR agency working with Jitterbug)
Filed under: Jitterbug,Less is more,Mobile
March 16th, 2009
In The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, Barry Schwartz argues that when we have too many choices, no matter what we choose we are never satisfied. Apple seems to know this and typically keeps only about 3-4 products in each of its lines at a time (e.g. iPod: Shuffle, Nano, Classic and Touch. Notebooks: MacBook, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro.)
Now Asus seems to be getting the message.
According to New Zeland PC World:
Asus will only launch two or three versions of the Eee PC this year, such as the Eee PC Touch and Eee PC Seashell, a company representative said Friday.
The new netbook strategy differs greatly from last year.
Asustek sold over 20 different versions of the Eee PC last year, with different names such as the Eee PC S101, Eee PC 1000H, Eee PC Surf and more. Analysts said the strategy hurt Asus in its bid to fight off competition from newcomers to the market segment, such as Acer, Dell and Lenovo.
Hopefully this move will allow customers to make better choices and help the company’s success. I’ll be watching.
Filed under: Asus,Less is more,Netbooks
February 2nd, 2009
In a recent earnings call, Tim Cook, Apple’s COO stated the company’s values in response to a question about how well Apple would run without Steve Jobs.
In its usually secretive way, Apple does not usually discuss its values. The only other statement of values I have seen from Apple is this 21 year old document. So, these few sentances give great insight into its approach and philosophy.
Here is what Tim said:
“The values of our company are extremely well entrenched.
We believe that we are on the face of the earth to make great products (and thats not changing). We’re constantly focusing on innovating. We believe in the simple not the complex. We believe we that need to own and control the primary technologies behind the products that we make and participate only in markets where we can make a significant contribution.
We believe in saying no to thousands of projects so that we can really focus on the few that are truly important and meaningful to us. We believe in deep collaboration and cross-pollination of our groups which allow us to innovate in a way that others cannot.
And frankly, we don’t settle for anything less then excellence in every group in the company and we have the self honesty to admit when we are wrong and the courage to change.”
Filed under: A great product is critical,Apple,Less is more
January 11th, 2009
I am back from CES now but one of the companies that I was most impressed with was Eton. They are the US distributor of Grundig shortwave radios. If you’ve seen the Grundig lineup you know how daunting some of those products can be to use.
That is why I was so pleasantly surprised by Eton’s own line of crank radios. First, the products seem to be engineered to be easy to use even though have many functions. For example you’ll see in the picture that the main, most used functions have giant knobs while other lesser functions are controlled by much smaller buttons.
Eton clearly understands the philosophy of “be ready to support what you sell.” The very first thing in their manuals is their phone support numbers and office hours. Also, every product page has a downloadable PDF manual.
Finally, they seem to understand that “the little things count.” Most of their radios have a port to charge a cell phone. So, Eton offers to send a charger tip to match a customers specific phone for free. Other companies would tack on a shipping charge or require customers to copy receipts, send in proof of purchase, etc. In the same vein, Eton has a online parts store with many battery covers listed at reasonable prices. How many electronic devices have you had in your life that had lost their battery cover?
I hope to be able to talk with Eton more to study what else they have have been doing right.
Filed under: Eton,Less is more,Little things matter a lot
