What’s your idiot-proof box?
Want everyone to use your software? Make an idiot-proof box. All successful and disruptive technology has one. I’m not sure why this is such a hard lesson for many companies. Idiot-proof boxes need zero training. People are busy and stressed, just give us our idiot-proof box and keep our heart-rate and time to a minimum.
Winner of the most disruptive idiot-proof box has to be Google.
Email’s idiot proof box is “send,” although it’s also the winner of the worst idiot proof box, “reply all” (the scariest button on a computer).
Instant messaging has had the same UI from the beginning. Here’s your idiot-proof box: write something and we get it instantly.
Twitter took a page from Instant messaging book but put a cap of 140 characters on they’re idiot-proof box. “Tell us what you’re doing, just keep it short, we’re busy.”
Blog and wiki software’s idiot-proof box is the “publish” and “edit” buttons, respectively.
YouTube’s explosive growth is connected to their idiot-proof box. Just cut and paste.
Firefox’s idiot-proof box is their tabs.
I just joined Seesmic yesterday and their idiot-proof box seems to be their red record button.
And then there’s the iPod. It’s idiot-proof box is more of a wheel but it changed the whole company’s destiny.
Things people have said about this post
[...] successfully, is: “What do you want a person to do?” Preferably there should be one idiot-proof answer to that question because if there isn’t, a person will likely become confused, and quite [...]
[...] successfully, is: “What do you want a person to do?” Preferably there should be one idiot-proof answer to that question because if there isn’t, a person will likely become confused, and quite [...]