Keith Devens .com - Weblog: Say "no" by default

Thursday, October 14, 2004

Say "no" by default

Steve Jobs on innovation: Gives me chills (Signal vs. Noise), via Paul. Say "no" by default. Make yourself be convinced that "no" is the wrong answer. Matt helped to teach me this.

Update: Also see this along the same lines. Via Ned.

Update: One more. See Jeff Hawkins on good design (via Alex). Jeff Hawkins designed the initial Palm Pilot, and the first item in his list of principles is "eliminate options".

Permalink | 4 Comments | id 5767

23:16 (utc-4)
edited: 2004-10-17 21:50 (utc-4)

Comments

Eralon wrote:

So what's your opinion of this?

∴ Eralon | 15-Oct-2004 12:13am est | #5872

I thought I was clear that I thought saying "no" by default was a good idea. It's in keeping with KISS. In software, the proper initial answer when you discuss a new feature is "no", and definitely not "sure, why not!"

∴ Keith | 15-Oct-2004 12:50am est | http://keithdevens.com/ | #5874

Sounds like a good policy to make software small and robust.

M. Bean wrote:

Haha... we've been through that a number of times, I'd say. Gosh, I think I even said something similar to that at one point. I wonder if I have it in the logs...

∴ M. Bean | 15-Oct-2004 2:11am est | #5876

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