What Do You Mean By Easy?
My next project is supposed to be "easy to use". Wanted to see this in the wild, with software you use.
Is there an app, a tool, a SaaS that you find easy?
- Easy to use
- Easy to register
- Easy to monetize
Or any other way it is easy?
If so, then why is it easy?
What makes it easy?
Does it save you time or energy or both?
And if you would like to go further... Do you have an internal mental difference between "simple" and "easy"?
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I just ran through a list, and I don't think I'd describe almost any of the tech products I use as "easy to use." A few exceptions:
And that might be it?
Something that reduces my effort in order to reach a goal that I find valuable.
This is super broad
googles home page is both easy and simple
mind mapping tools are easy and complex or is it simple but hard?
maybe
easy is something I can do
simple is something I can explain
it's easier if it has less steps / takes less time to get outcome
it's simpler if it has less concepts to teach/learn
This is an elegant description, love it!
I find myself on a similar graph or matrix often
a 4 square matrix formed by
So you'd agree, then: "Easy to Do" and "Simple to Explain" is best?
Surely that's a good start for a winning recipe :)
Throw in useful and valuable and your even stacking higher.
How are useful and valuable diametrically opposed? something like this?
"Useful" is beneficial
"Valuable" is logically beneficial
YouTube is useful
SAP is valuable
There are many very low valuble useful thing, commonly expected to be free.
A submarine is valuable but it's not useful for many people, in many situations or even for one person alone ;)
I think it's a trap many get into, if people love it and use but would never consider paying for it (directly or indirectly) it's useful but not valuable....
Better make something valuable above all other considerations in my mind.
The value is only set by someone actually paying for it.
The total value still equal to value for one person times amount of people.
So I'm not saying don't go for something that has a mass market
Just don't confuse mass market and someone paying for it
To mass market of people just clicking a way with 0 stickiness (would switch to alternative in a second), not valuing it to a point of paying or taking any action that would result in a payoff
Eaiser for smaller businesses to provide more value to less people I believe...
Other times the mass part should be recognised as only a marketing part of the business
Its easy if it doesn't get in my way.
Easy to me means 3 things:
Easy: Obtaining a desired outcome with less effort than existing alternatives.
You can then expand the definition of "effort" with some qualifiers: money, time, cognitive load, physical exertion, compromises, opportunity costs, etc.
So, yea, easy is a relative term but you can, imo, generalize people's experiences to measure it.
Amazon + Prime is relatively easier than going to Walmart during a Pandemic... except if you're an employee of Walmart.
mm. good questions. this is hard as it's different for every product.
"easy" and "simple" dno't mean the same thing for me, but, i'm struggling to think through differences atm. lol.
When I think of easy SaaS, I think of Trello. It's easy because the mental overhead of "How do I use this tool?" is next to zero. It just works, and I can just get started without needing a complex walk-through or onboarding experience.
As far as your other question goes, I definitely separate "simple" and "easy." Building an audience is simple to understand, but not easy to do.
'Simple' to me is a measure of complexity in terms of how many moving parts are needed to get the thing done.
"Put the thread into the eye of the needle."
One step, very 'easy' to explain but is it easy to accomplish? Simple is not directly linked to how easy something is, so what do I think easy is?
'Easy' is a measure of the amount of energy spent/needed to do the thing
When something is not simple but is easy, it is tedious.
When something is not simple and not easy, it is somebody else's problem.
When something is simple and easy, it is done
Easy comes to mind when I never need to think about "how", no user manual or onboarding required. Easy is also when things feel "smooth" wow just breezed through this process, was expecting to spend more time.
Simple comes to mind when something has few parts. A knife is simple, doesn't make it easy to master fully.
Recently I used balenaEtcher and it was both simple and easy. Cannot answer if they're easy to monetise though.
Google Squoosh is a specialized image file compression tool I find easy to use as it has just a couple of common features I use 99.99% of the time: uploading an image, adjusting the compression factor via a slider, and saving the compressed file. Squoosh doesn't require registration and I'm not aware of any direct monetization options.
As a non-native English speaker, I'm not the most qualified to comment on simple vs easy. But you may have non-native customers, so here's my shot.
I associate simple with a tool providing a small set of features and options addressing the most common tasks or user needs. A tool is easy if it has a lowly-sloped or no learning curve, and its features and options are promimently accessible or require a very small number of steps.