Here is a nice (old) post from Sam Ng at Optimal Usability about Ben Goodger’s presentation at Webstock last year:
“Ben Goodger, lead engineer for the Firefox browser, obviously believes in the power of the user interface and credits their ‘less is more’ philosophy as one of the key reasons for the browser’s success. As part of this philosophy, they made sure that the interface was clear, removing words or interface elements wherever they could to increase clarity. They also had fewer and more useful options, only including a configuration option if 15% or more of users were likely to change it. And they worked hard on using smart defaults, like turning the pop-up blocker on. All these small changes created a ‘cumulative feeling of quality’.”
From: http://www.optimalusability.com/post.php?postid=31
Designing for the 80% majority (or 85% in this case) is a great idea.
Sam – this is good stuff, what’s happened to your blog?
