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Donald Norman takes on 37Signals
Donald Norman takes on 37Signals
- In: Blog
- By: maxine
- March 18th, 2008
Or should that be 37Signals takes on Donald Norman?
Responding to a Wired Magazine article in which he was quoted as saying that the kind of simplicity embodied in the products of organisations like 37Signals was overrated, Donald Norman blogs
Now, I have always admired 37signals. Nice website, intelligent articles. But I’ve tried their products and although they have admirable qualities, they have never quite met my needs: Close is not good enough. After reading the article, I understand why: the developers are arrogant and completely unsympathetic to the people who use their products.
Followed by a choice quote from David Heinemeier Hansson which I’m not going to dignify by repeating here.
Essentially, Donald Norman objects to the 37Signals philosophy of “Design for yourself”, which on the surface at least, would tend to fly in the face of the core ideas behind user centred design.
So there is the rebuttal from Jason Fried.
We figure out what we want and whether other people will want it too.
This method works because our problems are common problems. Solutions to our own problems are solutions to other people’s problems too. By building products we want to use, we’re also building products that millions of other small businesses want to use. Not all businesses, not all customers, not everyone, but a healthy, sustainable, growing, and profitable segment of the market.
The key phrase in the above being “whether other people will want it too”. I think this is why the guys at 37Signals get under people’s skins: they don’t trouble themselves too much with elaborate systems for working this out, they give the impression that they can somehow just divine it during a chat over the morning coffee. I guess that’s a bit depressing for the rest of us who may not feel we have this talent so need to rely on user research instead.
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