Every tug on the user’s attention is noise. Even the “signal” is noise.
How is signal also noise? It’s because when someone walks into a store or opens a web page, they start at 10,000 feet. Then they zoom, pan, and scan until the signal emerges. It’s like finding a clear station with an analog radio knob.
So there’s a conflict. Your product must have enough “stuff” to be useful, but each thing you add makes the signal harder to find.
It gets worse:
A lot of software developers are seduced by the old “80/20″ rule. It seems to make a lot of sense: 80% of the people use 20% of the features. So you convince yourself that you only need to implement 20% of the features, and you can still sell 80% as many copies.
Unfortunately, it’s never the same 20%. Everybody uses a different set of features.
— Strategy Letter IV: Bloatware and the 80/20 Myth by Joel Spolsky
If noise is inescapable, then it must be tamed.
- Analog radio dials have numbers printed on them.
- Grocery stores have signs and aisles. Cans of soup are grouped by brand then type.
- Nice grocery stores make sure the soup cans are tightly packed with labels facing out.
- Newspapers use grids, whitespace, margins, leading, and headlines.
- Operating systems (should) have consistent button and UI widget styles so the user always knows what’s actionable.