I Want Less And I'm Willing To Pay For It

Recently I wrote an article on Flow and musical instrument design, arguing that too many electronic musical instruments disrupt creative flow because their interfaces are poor and they emphasize features instead of user experience. It came out of work done by a brainstorming group at Project Bar-B-Q in the fall of 2004.

I used "flow" in the sense defined by Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi in his studies of the thought processes of creative people. Although my article featured some fairly bitter complaints (don't get me started again), I do think there are some hopeful signs out there that the future may be brighter.

One is Apple's Garageband - not to be confused with garageband.com, which I wrote about recently and which I think is also cool.

Like a lot of pro users, I assumed Garageband was a toy when it first appeared - after all, it's pretty much free. I tried the first version, and it seemed to me it had some timing accuracy problems, so I went back to Logic and other heavier duty tools. But lately, like a lot of pros I know, I've gone back to Garageband and have been using it more and more. And it's been making me very happy, because Garageband has so little going for it. It's just that what's there is exactly what you need when you have an idea -- it's as fast and handy as a pencil and a piece of paper (a standard still unmet by any electronic technology). The emerging work flow is: Have an idea, grab it with Garageband, then develop it in Logic or the like.

Why not just start in Logic, since Logic can do everything Garageband does, plus about a universe-full of other things? Because in flow, every second counts.

This is a concept I'm convinced many product designers still haven't grasped -- they claim that the public demands more features, and they must keep up with the competition. But I argue that flow is valuable -- Csikszentmihalyi says it may be the most valuable experience we have. And flow is essentially a rhythm, and if you're trying to keep that rhythm going, seconds are expensive, let alone the minute or two it might take to get a Logic session going vs. Garageband near one-click responsiveness.

But those who have grasped it are doing pretty well. Amazon.com, for example is all about creating and preserving a flowing shopping experience -- their One-Click feature is emblematic. Or Apple again, with the iPod and iTunes, which have transformed Apple's financial performance.

Derek Sivers of CDBaby.com has some very insightful things to say about this in his blog entry Say No By Default, and there offers this quote from Steve Jobs:

"...we don't want a thousand features. That would be ugly. Innovation is not about saying yes to everything. It's about saying NO to all but the most crucial features."

But wait... am I REALLY willing to pay for it? I just mentioned that Garageband is nearly free. From Apple's point of view I certainly am paying for it. Garageband may be nearly free, but the Jam Pack I bought the other day to extend its instrument library cost $99, and there'll sure be more of those in my future. Logic, also owned by Apple, is far from free, and Garageband is a very effective feeder for Logic. And for consumers, Garageband fits well with the whole iLife suite, including iTunes, iDVD, etc.

iLike it.

[Disclosure: I did a bit of consulting for Apple for their acquisition of Emagic, the maker of Logic, though at the time I was in the dark about what their plans were.]

Will you pay to flow?