I was having lunch with a friend of mine a couple days ago and while we were eating, I was ranting to him about how if you search for “Rishi Khaitan” on Google, itsrishi.com is not the first result. Before I knew it I started explaining to him how Google ranks results, SEO, etc. About a minute into it, he interrupted me and was like “I guess I never really thought about how Google does it’s thing. I love Google ’cause it just works.” I thought about what he said some more. It hit me that I’ve become accustomed to talking endlessly about how things work with my geeky friends that sometimes I’ve lost focus on what’s really important. Users universally want one thing. They want things to “just work”.

Sure, Google has a simple interface and is very fast, but what makes it so ubiquitous is the fact that it doesn’t require any specialized knowledge of its user in order to work well and reliably. You type in some search words, click Search, you get good results. That’s it. Everytime. When things “just work” you feel in control. When you drive, it’s the same thing. Gas pedal go. Brake pedal stop. Everytime. There’s a sense of satisfaction and control that people have when driving. Could you imagine if even 5% of the time, the brake pedal did something else? We’d have a lot less people driving that’s for sure. But this isn’t just an issue of reliability. Complexity of operation is just as important. Just about everyone today owns at least one camera. You press the button, it takes a picture. You don’t have to know jack about what’s going on. It just works. What if auto-focusing was never invented? If you had to manually focus every shot, there would be a whole lot less cameras sold. Things that “just work” make us feel confident and in control which in turn makes us feel comfortable and joyful.

There will always be successful products which offer lots of functionality because their primary market demands it, such as SLR cameras which are intended for photography hobbyists and professionals. Such products are complex and most people won’t be happy with it. But that’s fine. Most people will choose more accessible, mainstream options.

The lesson here is, if you’re aiming to make your product a household name, you gotta make sure it “just works”. I know this doesn’t sound like rocket science, but I seem to come across countless products which promise to be the next “big thing” yet violate this basic principle.