I’ve been wondering lately how much you improve the user experience by adding complexity to existing software. Does every further iteration, however Rich and immersive, necessarily help people do the tasks for which they are using software in the first place? Maybe it’s heresy, I know.
Here’s a well-argued post questioning extraneous further refinement in applications that work, from Neil Middleton. Using MS Word as an example, he asks simple: did you upgrade to Word 2008, and what features persuaded you to do so? Let’s face it, there were only a few new features, and with all the unused functionality in Word now, one has to wonder how excited people really were about the release. Can Microsoft be unaware of this?
Adobe recently bought Omniture and Omniture’s web monetization technology, ostensibly to help Adobe to monetize web content created with Adobe’s software suite, and on the surface it seems a likely enough fit. I wrote a post arguing that it’s driven by Adobe’s realization that future versions of their software tools might not enjoy the same growth in revenue generation as they have until this point. Diversifying into other revenue generators is a necessity, not a choice, for this reason. Are we on the cusp of mass acquisitions from entrenched companies who see that using their cash to add to their corporate focus might be one way out of this?
