Software developers have always tried to deliver greater efficiency to their users. Traditionally this has meant adding more powerful, more sophisticated features to their software.
As more features are added the interfaces became more cluttered. As more advanced options and power tools were added, it became harder for new users to learn the essential core functions.
Adding more power and more sophistication has usually created bloatware not efficiency.
Simpler is More Efficient
We aim to avoid those mistakes. Every time we add a new feature, we think about all the different scenarios – all the different edge cases.
While ensuring exceptions are handled elegantly, we focus on the simplest scenario – the basic task that it will be used for and we design for that.
We believe
- It must be simple to do simple, frequent tasks.
- Tasks that are infrequent or complex take a lower priority.
- Everything that can be removed should be removed.
- Simpler, cleaner interfaces increases user efficiency.
- Additional items and choices are only included when and where they are needed.
For instance, views are a powerful feature that will be very useful. We know it’s an important feature and want to make sure people know it’s there.
But if the dataset is small and everyone can access all the dataset, views are unnecessary.
As we are designing for the simplest case, we had to resist the urge to add views prominently.
So the views feature will only be visible when needed. Users can choose between defined views. Administrators can create views in dataset settings. Otherwise “views” are removed from the interface.
Latest Sprint
Latest progress update
Views
Views make it easy to focus on different parts of a dataset e.g. a department head might have a view that shows projects waiting to be approved, while project managers might have views that only show projects they are managing.
Tags
Tags are a flexible way to organize and find datasets. You might have tags for different teams e.g. Finance, Europe, IT, Global or for different statuses e.g. New, Archived, Complete.
Feedback
Your feedback is shaping the development of LiveDataset, so we want to make it as quick and easy as possible. Now you don’t even need to switch out of LiveDataset.
① Views present subsets of a dataset. e.g. Approved projects
② Tags make it easier to organize datasets e.g. IT projects
③ Provide instant feedback to the LiveDataset team