It’s gotten a little semantic, but it doesn’t get much better than the above link: two of my favorites duking it out.
After reading the back and forth posts and the wierd article it’s clear that 37Signals is arrogant. You have to have some arrogance to be effectively persuasive. But if you are being perceived as arrogant when attempting to share you ideas, you are loosing ground.
However, Norman looses me when he claims “Make it simple and people won’t buy”. While I’m sure that’s true in some cases, it’s a pretty glaring over simplification for someone arguing the virtues of complexity. It doesn’t do much to account for the consumer success of the iPod, Wii or DS.
Normans trying to take a business approach centered around customer acquisition. But he leaves out the idea of margins entirely. Edge cases tend to drive down margins. More features may attract additional edge case customers, but at what cost?
Regardless… This is a great debate.
Mike Trotzke
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Why we disagree with Don Norman - (37signals)
