Ben Kepes from CloudAve recently wrote Is There a sweet spot for features? about usability issues in web applications offering more and more features everyday.
As he states:
It’s easy as pie to create a good looking and intuitive user experience when your solution only includes a few functional areas, but as you roll out further functionality all of a sudden that simplicity and intuitive feel starts to lose out to nested menus, complexity and options.
In my opinion, you have to solve two main issues:
- How do you combine keeping it simple for users with simple needs with offering a complete solution to power users.
- How do you display and browse your data, especially when the amount of features becomes huge.
Before going further, I encourage you to watch our first video about the BeeBole interface and features illustrating a few of the points discussed here.