WaffleBox

More is the new less.

I was one of the first to jump on the “less is more” (in terms of web app and website features) bandwagon, but I am ready to jump ship! Why is it that I am more drawn to, clutter effectively, over minimalist designs? Am I sick or bored with simple? Or maybe I am just bored with the sites that take a “one less feature” approach.

Maybe it’s interaction
I refuse to believe I feel this way simply because everything is cyclical simply for cyclicals sake. That we get bored or sick of things quickly. While I think there is some validity to this, I do not think that its 100% of the reasoning. I believe it is because of the direction the web in going in, or more accurately, the state it currently is in.

Communities. Niche communities. People are generally sick of all the social networks that pop up everyday, but I say bring them on. Social networks are become more about pleasing specific niches, helping people with common interests mingle and connect. Sure we could have stopped at MySpace or Facebook, but then we would not have sites like news.ycombinator.com (one of my first stops of the day). Hell, we could have stopped at HTML and Perl CGI! It has 99% of everything we need. We need more to satisfy out palettes.

More of what?
Ah! Glad you asked. It’s key to know what we need more of because simply adding more of everything, ahem Web 1.0, will kill your site - This is another reason why I think it is not for simple cyclical reasons that simple sites are boring me. 90’s websites were about cramming everything you could onto a website and it did not matter what it was. Buttons, dancing babies, spinning letters (yeah… Every letter in the title of my first website spun!), frames, webrings and so forth.

Adding more to define a site can have huge benefits. Take a look at Fred Wilson’s blog A VC. It is pretty jam packed with every widget available. But there is a clear purpose to this, framing his “world view”. For starters it lets you into what kind of person Fred is. He likes, nay, loves software. It is clearly his passion and seeing as he funds software startups, it is no surprise that he wants to test out every bit of software technology he can get his hands on. Lijit, Voki, Flickr, and MyBlogLog to name a few.

The way things are now, it comes down to communities, people being able to define and dictate the direction a website will take. I will probably add a follow up post that talks more about the importance of letting your users guide the direction of your website or blog.

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