We've all heard the old saying, "You can't have your cake and eat it too". It's rolls off the tongue so much more easily than, "You can't have two things which are incompatible".

A few things in life are absolutes. Most everything else, even if broadly accepted, is open to challenge.

Seems to me that in software recently, the proverbial 'can't have your cake...' is being applied to web application design left and right. The number of ultra-simple tools with narrow feature sets reflects a mindset of: 'you can't have your simple application and features too'. Aiming to satisfy the perceived needs of the masses, designers are quick to reduce feature counts in the name of achieving simplicity and adoption.

Is simplicity the golden ticket for delivering success?

Simple is fine if meaningful value is delivered. A simple application absent of differentiating features is, well, simplistic.

This past winter, as we were defining the blueprint for our upcoming June release, it came into sharp focus for me. Rather than placing simplicity and strict feature prioritization on the pedestal, we instead became fanatical about minimizing what we expected a person to know when using Smartsheet. It's wasn't about fewer features. The key is fewer concepts. We define concepts as things a person needs to understand in order to use a feature to its fullest potential. Be less concerned about introducing too many features to a user...show instead a healthy respect for the time/patience they have for understanding, using, and getting value from them. Feature richness isn't the enemy...a learning curve that makes people frustrated or feel web-illiterate is.

It's not that difficult to launch a simple online service for managing grocery lists or trip packing lists. What is difficult, and what we will deliver to an even greater degree with the June release, is a highly capable web service for making individuals and teams more productive while keeping it EASY TO USE. From interacting with more than 25,000 teams over the past year, two things we've added to our 'list of absolutes' are:
1) Never tell a user they'll be better off with less so that you could keep things simple. Sorry, that's a design issue.
and
2) Value should be immediately apparent and accessible. Let them see it, understand it, and get things done - now.