"Why Google and Apple Win, and You Don't"

Close to being right on the money. And as Boomers age and our time gets ever more expensive, ease-of-use will, too.

(Why "close"? There are other firms who deeply appreciate customer friendliness and easy of use: Amazon, DonorsChoose, and Zingerman's to name three.)

Comments

[Tom]

Complexity is generally a good sign of lack of thought. Simplicity, common sense and clarity take a lot more consideration. People always prefer simplicity. I think this holds for everything from software to instructions to your stories. If you to improve the chances that people will like/use your product, then remove as much of the unnecessary bits as possible.

[JorgXMcKie]

Well, I think the MacBooks line sometimes over relies a bit on 'intuitive' activity, but in general, spot on.
Zingerman's BTW takes what it does at the deli (and their restaurant, I am led to believe) and instead of trying to replicate the in-store activity tries to replicate the customer 'feeling' and satisfaction. I.e. they design their webpage with the convenience of the customer in mind.
At the deli, they use a rather typical customer number system where you take a number, get your order taken by the first person available, move on to pay, and then either wait for take-out or go to the seating area with a receipt to await it being brought to you. Every step is designed to convenience the customer.

Due to my teaching activity, I spend quite a lot of time visiting municipal websites. They are uniformly dreadful, probably because they rather obviously are designed with the internal bureaucracy in mind rather than the 'consumer' looking for info.

Ah, well.