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June 15, 2005

Get out of my way

Several years ago, I came across an open-response question:

“If you could have only one superpower, what would it be?”

A lot of respondents wanted to fly, or be immortal, or see the future - but one person came up with a superpower that I keep going back to time and time again:

The power to make people get out of my way.

Line at the grocery? On hold? Crowded room? Traffic? Obstructionist bureaucrat? Get out of my way. The joy in the idea only underlined how much time we all spend with someone in our way - often for no good reason. Jenni and I still turn to each on regular occasion and chant, “I want the power to make people get out of my way.”

During a content-poor seminar this morning, I was pruning and cleaning the documents on my Windows laptop. And was marvelling at all the little ways that Windows kept getting in my way. Mix of mouse and keyboard to do simple tasks. Lack of visual cues. Terribly inconsistent interface. Obscured menu language. It got even worse when I decided to take some time to explore OneNote - which is supposed to be Microsoft’s let-you-do-things-quick freeform note-taking app.

The damn thing kept getting in my way until I shut it up and went back to my good old text editor. Maybe OneNote does neat stuff - but I couldn’t get the damn thing out of my way long enough to find out.

And I realized that I wanted my old favorite superpower, but applied to technology. That all the technologies and solutions and applications that I enjoyed using were the ones that - as much as possible - either stayed out of your way or got other things out of your way.

I’ve spent a lot of my career in technology saying that what I enjoy doing is providing cool solutions and elegant tools. But what is a “cool” solution or an “elegant” tool? I couldn’t find a succinct way of saying it. I have that now.

Tools that get out of your way.

Posted by jim at June 15, 2005 01:10 PM