The developer who helped popularize AJAX and Ruby on Rails lives (and designs) by a simple coda: People love less.Jason Fried wants to save Web applications from bloat. What that means to developers out there, blithely publishing content or coding software like a veritable monkey on a typewriter, is this: Stop adding unnecessary features to your products, stop writing obtuse prose on your Web site, and always, always remember that your audience doesn't care about your technology. They'd rather just use something that works.
Why should you listen to Jason Fried (pronounced FrEEd)? Fried heads up 37 Signals, a five-person Web services firm-cum-development shop that is widely considered to be reinvigorating application design with products such as Basecamp, Backpack and Ta-Da Lists.
Fried is also the coauthor of Defensive Design for the Web, and he and his firm have worked on projects for Microsoft, Monster.com, Meetup and many others. The firm maintains a popular blog at 37signals.com/svn.
Fried and company's products are paradigms of simplicity and style. Their first application, Basecamp, is a Web-based project management tool. Upon its release last year, it garnered accolades for offering only the essential tools that project managers needed: to-do lists, milestones, and a calendar.
"If a product just does three things, is that bad?" Fried said in a phone interview recently. "Not if those three things are exactly what you need the product to do."
37 Signals' subsequent products, Ta-Da Lists and Backpack, are also Web-based management tools that stick to the "less is more" philosophy.
But not only did Fried and company earn high marks for tackling an old problem in a unique way, they also drew attention through their innovative development techniques. 37 Signals' products were developed using a little known programming language known as Ruby, which has since become popular in development circles.
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37 Signals also pioneered the use of a development technique dubbed AJAX, or Asynchronous Javascript and XML. The benefit of AJAX-powered designs is that Web pages get updated, instead of completely refreshed, which significantly decreases page load times, leading to better user experiences.
AJAX development techniques can be found in everything from Google Maps to Gap.com's recent redesign.
But as exciting as Ruby and AJAX may be, Fried will be quick to tell you that technology, no matter how advanced, doesn't sell a product. Rather, it's user experience that counts.
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"The days of long feature lists are gone. It's not all about bold point lists. People don't care about technology," Fried told Publish.com during a phone interview. "They care about technology solving their problems."
In the end, the test of a successful deployment of technology is how well you hide that technology, according to Fried. His development coda is simple: People love less.
In the coming months though, people will be getting more from 37 Signals. The company will soon be self-publishing a book on Getting Real, which will explain their design philosophy. They also have three new applications in the works.
We spoke with Fried on the phone recently to gain some more insight into the burgeoning development world.
Next Page: Is it possible for a big company to change the way it thinks?
So we had a little trouble getting in touch on the phone. Still having problems with your new cell?
Yeah, it's getting really frustrating. Billions of people can call me, but you can't call me if you have SprintPCS. I called Cingular and they're like 'it's a Sprint problem' and I called Sprint and they don't care because I'm not a customer any longer. It's a lot of finger pointing at this point. It's been five or six weeks and I'm starting to yell, and something seems to be happening. Finally. Maybe. I don't know.
I was about to call Coudal Partners and see if they could contact you, since you guys are in the same building.
Actually, I'm using their phone right now.
Oh man. Well, good luck with that. Anyway, right before we got on the phone I learned that you actually did some work for pcmag.com a few years back. [pcmag.com is owned by Ziff-Davis Internet, which also publishes publish.com.]
Yeah, we did a couple of concept pages for the reviews. We also did some stuff with the home page.
You've said before that it can be hard for companies to change how they work. Your design process is to keep things simple, and keep the number of people involved to a minimum. Do you think it's possible to translate 37 Signals' design and application building philosophy to big companies, which usually rely on established bureaucracies?
That's a good question. I think a lot of it is cultural. Willingness and unwillingness to change…And I don't think one size fits all. I think the key when you have a big company like this is to break away into teams. When there's too many people involved, nothing gets done. It's hard though…I think the leaner you are, the faster things get done. And better.
Is that what your upcoming book Getting Real is all about?
Yes. Getting Real is basically everything we've learned over the past two years building our products. It's about staying small and reducing your mass. And mass can be a lot of things. Mass can be rent, mass can be expensive contracts, or being locked into a software platform or hardware platform. It's just like in physics: The more mass an object has, the more energy it takes to change direction. A lot of small companies make the mistake of trying to act big. But the way to beat the big guys is to stay small. Don't try to act big. That's just something we learned. Embrace constraints. A lot of companies spend all their time getting obstacles out of the way, but they never get anything done. What we do is work within and around that obstacle…We fight bloat. Software bloat, feature bloat. All that extra stuff gets in the way of a simple product and a simple interface. And at the end of the day, the interface is what's important to people.
Speaking of interfaces, I notice that one of your design principles is that copywriting is interface design. Can you unpack that for me?
Copywriting is probably one of the most overlooked parts of design and one of the Web's biggest weaknesses. Even things as small as buttons, like the submit button. In most interfaces when you perform an action, you'll see two buttons: save and cancel. Well we make our products to say "Save or Cancel." That's important. When you're speaking to someone, you wouldn't say "Save Cancel?" You'd give them a choice, like a natural conversation. That's just one example. People have this tendency to make things very techie, maybe because they're writing on the Web. But you need to start thinking about what those buttons and words mean. Don't use acronyms and words that people don't understand. People use internal lingo. Maybe if you're an engineer talking to engineers, yeah, you don't have to explain what you're saying. But not everybody's an engineer…And look, you're going to read what you're using. It's pretty rare that you use something without reading it first…The key thing is to talk to your audience.
Next Page: Are breakthroughs on the Web primarily technological, or ideological, or both?
So I hear you talking a lot about writing, and interfacing with customers and audiences. Are breakthroughs on the Web primarily technological, or ideological, or both?
I think people who put too much focus on technology are missing the point. Like for instance, there's a lot of talk in Web development circles about AJAX, but that doesn't mean anything to people who aren't Web designers. I see all these Web sites and products saying "AJAX-equipped" or "powered by AJAX" and it doesn't mean anything. I mean, what does that mean?
You mean sell the benefits, not the features.
Exactly, exactly. The days of long feature lists are gone. It's not all about bold point lists. If a product just does three things, is that bad? Not if those three things are exactly what you need the product to do. People don't care about the technology, they care about the technology solving their problems.
So speaking of new and confusing technology, what do you think of this Web 2.0 thing? What is it, what does it mean?
Um, you know, I don't really know what it means. I know what people think it means: AJAX, tags, things like flickr…
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Kind of like that old philosophical problem, you can give examples of beauty but you can't define beauty itself.
Right. I mean, hopefully Web 2.0 is better interfaces. Simpler products, successful products, products that are focused. Products that embrace little bits of technology…I mean, it can mean a bunch of old ideas redone, too. Our products aren't rocket science. They're to-do lists and time trackers and notes. Everybody needs that. It's not about huge innovations. It should be about building useful products. But really, I don't know what Web 2.0 means either.
Do you think the term Web 2.0 puts too much emphasis on a teleological imperative that isn't healthy or necessary for products?
At this point I do think Web 2.0 is too tech-focused. Tech should
always serve the people. So much of "Web 2.0" is about what people
get out of the products. The utility is what's important. If tech can
help that, great, but if it's just tech for tech's sake then I'm
afraid we're going in the wrong direction.
You've mentioned AJAX a few times. What about Flash? Does Flash have a place in the future of Web?
I think every tool has its place. I think Flash is in a little bit of trouble because of AJAX, because AJAX just requires Javascript and it doesn't require a browser plug-in. But we've never really worked with Flash for our apps. I mean, I've played with it a bit for my own personal interest. I know it's pretty powerful now. I haven't really used it in a few years. But we've had clients that contact us and they're like, 'we want a Flash-based Web site.' And the first question we ask is why. And they never really can explain why…I haven't seen much out there that's that interesting or useful that's done in Flash, except for flickr, and that's just a few things in the interface that are Flash. Flash can be good, but I don't use it.
I've heard you say a few times that the way forward, as far as design and development is concerned, is to listen to your products. Now that Basecamp and Backpack have been out for a while, what are your products saying?
I think they're saying 'stay simple.' There's this thing we talk about around here called 'feature loops.' And if you listen closely to products they say 'don't do that, it's not a feature you need.' You shouldn't forget why your product is successful. Don't give in to product bloat. Too many Web sites and applications do.
And it's not just the Web. It's everything. Everything gets more complicated when it doesn't need to.
Right, right. Another good example is car radios. I mean, have you seen them? I was looking at them the other day and they have all these extra buttons and lights and what's it all for? I don't know, that's not my market. But it's very hard to find simple things these days. Just because something's getting older and becoming more mature, doesn't mean it needs to get more complicated. Take pencils for example, or pens. Sure, different pens have different features. But no one complains about the pencil. No one is saying 'can you add this feature to my pencil.' Why? Because it works just like it's supposed to. What about hammers? Hammers are another thing that just works. It doesn't need improvement. It does the one thing it's good for very well. So maybe we can take this lesson into applications. Maybe there's a point where products end? Not die, but just end.
What's next from 37 Signals? Can you tell me a little bit about Writeboard or other projects you've got coming up?
We have 3 new products in development as well as our second book. One
product is for writing, one product is for conversations, and the
third product is positioned to redefine the stale "CRM" market. We
won't call our product a CRM product, but it is about people,
customers, relationships, and keeping all those things on track. And
our book is about our Getting Real ideas.
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