37 Signals vs. Don Norman

Wired magazine’s feature about the founders of 37 Signals has caused a minor skirmish in the user experience community, and I’m choosing sides.

Donald Norman, usability guru, who was quoted in the Wired article, blasted 37 Signals’s Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson on his blog after the article was published.

Now, I have always admired 37signals… 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.

He then goes on to re-assert his argument that simplicity is actually not something that users are looking for in a product, and that the idea of developers designing software purely for themselves is a recipe for fail.  While Norman makes a valid argument, especially in his post script, I think that he has missed the point.

37 Signals posted a retort to Norman’s criticism, and did an excellent job of explaining their point of view and design process:

Designing for ourselves first yields better initial results because it lets us design what we know. It lets us assess quality quickly and directly, instead of by proxy. And it lets us fall in love with our products and feel passionate about what we make. There’s simply no substitute for that.

Jason Fried’s open letter to Don Norman is well-written, has some good quotes on user experience design by Steve Jobs and describes how the staff at 37 Signals reviews and edits countless feature requests in order to avoid feature bloat.

In my experience, designing for yourself first makes a lot of sense, as long as your needs are representative of the audience whom you are designing for.

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