I often think about choices we make as product designers as a series of trade-offs. One code trade-off is around how much we want to design for the power user.
I’ve often thought about that trade-off when I’ve operated microwaves. Microwaves have gotten so complicated with an ever expanding set of options. However, if I had to guess, over 90% of the usage is some version of the “add 30 seconds” or 1 minute button.
This microwave’s design brought that trade-off to light. All this microwave does is allow users to change power level and time with a simple dial. No learning curve required. It just works.
It won’t work for the person who wants to use the microwave to defrost something. But for most folks, it’ll probably do the job.
I loved this design because it beautifully illustrates the trade-offs we need to make when we make our products simpler. We’ll effectively be telling some group of people “this is not for you.”
And that’s both okay and why building simple product is hard.
Simple product is opinionated product.
