The Wit and Wisdom of Scott Cook

Intuit's mini-conference on "Startups and the Cloud," which I wrote about here, featured a lively Q&A session with Scott Cook, Intuit's founder and chairman of the executive committee. Scott—who impressed me as knowledgeable, personable, and down-to-earth—offered a couple of sage remarks I particularly liked.

"Familiarity is 90% of ease of use."

Scott talked about the pains Intuit went through, especially in the early days, to eliminate complexity from their products' user interfaces. Convincing novice computer users to adopt Quicken as their tool for managing household finances was quite a challenge, particularly back in the days when an unformatted floppy drive could flummox a new user. (Intuit's solution: never tell the user the floppy drive is unformatted. Format the drive automatically, and let the user get on with his or her work.)

On a quest for usability, Intuit bought the rights to the interface of another product that was already popular and easy to use. Intuit engineers copied that other product's interface, pixel-by-pixel, and built it into a new version of Quicken.

"Familiarity is 90% of ease-of-use." If an interface design is already familiar, users don't have to think about using it. They simply use it and get on with their work.

I think Scott's advice about familiarity is spot on. Don't try to be overly creative or clever with your UI. When it comes to UI design, simplicity and familiarity are the cardinal virtues.

Later in the Q&A session, Scott Cook said this:

"Behind every successful entrepreneur, you'll find a supportive spouse and a couple of very surprised in-laws."

That remark rang true, too, and made me chuckle.