Why most things are not simple
One reason occurred to me earlier this week as I was looking at 37signals’ new Answers advice/tips/forum app. As with the rest of the 37signals repertoire, it does what it needs to do and not a lot else. The tag filtering is particularly nice: could be more complex (“Choose multiple tags at once?”), but isn’t (“Nope”). Focus power, Daniel-san!
So the thought that occurred to me is this: When things are simple, it very quickly becomes obvious whether they are any good or not. If you’ve built something that does only one thing and it’s a clunker, there’s nowhere to hide. This is pretty terrifying to most people, I think. It’s easier to pile on the functionality and try and convince your users that Quantity returns better value for their money or attention than Quality does.
It’s easier to do because Quantity merely requires that you have time, while Quality requires that you have skill.