James Governor's Monkchips

Take A Chainsaw to Feature Bloat: Lessons from Drupal

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More excellent discussion is emerging on my thread about enterprise applications and user interaction models. Today I got a comment from Leisa Reichelt and its so good I decided to publish it in full as its own post. Leisa is one of the leading lights in user experience (UX) services in London. Most recently she has been heads down working on the Drupal 7 User Experience Project – here is a detailed view of the Information Architecture.

“In my experience this problem tends to stem from the general principle that for businesses ‘more is more’ and for end users ‘less is more’. Businesses see value in huge requirement lists being met and masses of functionality being provided (in many cases, functionality that is way beyond the needs of the organisation that has acquired it). All of this excess functionality places a huge toll on the user experience for the people who have to use the software day to day.

A user experience practitioner should be able to help the organisation to identify what is the required functionality and the best way for that functionality to be presented in the UI so as to optimise the experience for the end user. However, in many cases, this would require a radically new way of thinking about what value means in these kinds of business transactions.

Sadly, in too many cases, the people who could potentially help make these good decision are either not at the table at all (as you suggested James) or are at the table but so far away from the management that all they can do if fiddle with the UI here and there.

Ajax, Javascript, Flash – they’re all great tools, but only if well applied, and they’ll never solve the problem of feature bloated and overly complex interaction pathways.

What is really needed is a UX person sufficiently aware of the end user behaviour and sufficiently influential within the business to be able to take a chainsaw to feature bloat and to insist on being able to create interactions that are just as much as they need to be and nothing more.

Then we can take a look at the RIA side of things and use them as they *should* be used, which are *enhancements* to the overall user experience.”

Great stuff Leisa. Thanks! Boiled down, the Drupal 7 UX Principles are

    1. Make the most frequent tasks easy and less frequent tasks achievable.
    2. Design for the 80%
    3. Privilege the Content Creator
    4. Make the default settings smart

Sounds obvious? Maybe – but it doesn’t sound like enterprise application state of the art…

update: i lifted this picture from Leisa’s pics on flickr drupal 7 redesign group.

8 comments

  1. @monkchips btw your post on feature bloat is excellent: http://is.gd/34XvN It speaks to the heart of the #drupal #smallcore movement.
    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

  2. If ur interested in user interaction models n stuff @monkchips post today reminds me of @mediajunkie & @whitneyhess http://bit.ly/vm9Bm
    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

  3. “problem tends to stem from the general principle that for businesses ‘more is more’ and for end users ‘less is more’” http://bit.ly/opC4r
    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

  4. […] Reichelt, quoted in Take A Chainsaw to Feature Bloat: Lessons from Drupal: In my experience this problem tends to stem from the general principle that for businesses ‘more […]

  5. Take A Chainsaw to Feature Bloat http://bit.ly/1fhJID
    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

  6. Take A Chainsaw to Feature Bloat: Lessons from Drupal http://bit.ly/1fhJID
    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

  7. Love the picture… reminds me of a scrum board. Take Apple for example. in all their products, you get the 20% of the functionality that you need and no more. this increases productivity. Less is more definitely

  8. http://tinyurl.com/m7pubo
    James Governor’s Monkchips » Take A Chainsaw to Feature Bloat: Lessons from Drupal
    This comment was originally posted on Twitter

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