In 1841 a man named John Grooms sat in a small office in London and he tried to make a list of every street corner that sold apples. He thought this was a good service for the public and he thought more information was always better than less information.

By the time he reached the third district he realized that if he included the price of the apples and the name of the vendor and the color of the fruit then the map became so large that a person could not unfold it in the wind. The map was a marvel of data but it was a failure of utility because the man who just wanted an apple could not find the street through the forest of ink. John Grooms is a stranger to us now but his ghost sits in every meeting where people try to design a guide for a kitchen knife or a deadbolt lock.

The Anatomy of Addition

The room is usually too bright and the coffee is usually too cold and there are four people sitting around a table with a mockup of a page. One person is responsible for the words and one person is responsible for the money and one person is responsible for the way the page looks on a phone.

The editor wants to explain why a specific steel is better for a blade and he wants a spec glossary at the top. The marketing person wants a ranking panel with gold stars because people like to see things in an order and they like to click on stars. The design person wants a box for related guides so the reader stays on the site and never leaves. Each of these requests is a small thing and each request has a reason that sounds smart and helpful and kind. No one is trying to hurt the reader and everyone thinks they are adding value to the experience.

But the page is like a field of grass and the attention of the reader is like the cows that eat the grass. If you put too many cows in the field then the grass dies and then you have no cows and you have no field. Every box you add is another cow.

The editor does not care about the marketing box and the marketing person does not care about the spec glossary but the reader has to see both of them at the same time. The reader has a limited amount of focus and they did not come to the page to look at boxes or panels or stars. They came to the page because their sink is leaking or their house is dark or they need to clean a rug and they just want to know what to buy.

The Helpful Splinter

I just removed a splinter from my thumb and it was a tiny piece of wood from a cedar fence but it felt like a mountain while it was inside the skin. It made me think about how we build things for the web. We think that adding one more helpful feature is like adding a tool to a toolbox but it is actually more like adding a splinter to a hand.

If there are too many tools in the box then you cannot find the hammer and if there are too many boxes on the page then you cannot find the answer. The relief of pulling out the splinter was better than the feeling of the wood and the relief of a clean page is better than the feeling of a thousand features.

The Currency of Time

If you look at the way eyes move across a page you will see a strange thing. A person spends about 37 seconds on a product review before they decide to trust it or leave it and that is the same amount of time it takes to tie your shoes or boil a small pot of water.

You have only left them 7 seconds to read the actual words that tell them if the vacuum will work on their carpet. We are spending the reader’s time on the frame of the picture instead of the picture itself.

This is the tragedy of the commons inside an editorial office. The attention of the reader has no owner. The editor owns the accuracy and the sales team owns the revenue and the developer owns the load time but nobody is the guardian of the reader’s mental energy. Every department takes a little bit of that energy for their own goals and they all think they are taking a fair share. But when you add up all the fair shares you find that you have taken everything and the reader is left with nothing. They are left with a screen that is full of noise and they are left with a brain that is too tired to make a choice.

From Mazes to Paths

We see this most often in the buying guide. A buying guide is supposed to be a path through a woods but we turn it into a hedge maze. We add a section on how we tested the products and then we add a section on the history of the product category and then we add a comparison table that is twelve columns wide. We do this because we want to show that we are experts and we want to show that we did the work.

They need selection criteria that make sense for their life and their home. When I look at the work done by House Assay I see an attempt to solve this problem by focusing on what the reader actually needs to know. It is about understanding the specifications and the trade-offs so a person can relate the features to their own space.

This requires a person in the room to say no. It requires someone to say that the ranking panel is not as important as the clear explanation of why one lock is harder to pick than another. It requires the authority to protect the white space on the page.

The Three-Item Window

The hardest thing to do in a meeting is to say that we should do less. Everyone wants to be the person who added the clever box or the person who found the new way to show data. No one wants to be the person who said the page is already full. But if no one says the page is full then the page will overflow and the reader will drown. We have to treat attention like a physical object that can be broken or lost. We have to treat it like the grass in the field.

I once knew a man who ran a small shop and he would only put three items in the front window at a time. People told him he was wasting his space and they told him he could fit twenty items if he just used smaller stands. He said that if he put twenty items in the window then people would see a pile of junk but if he put three items in the window then they would see a watch or a ring or a pen. He understood that the eye needs a place to land. He understood that the window was not for the items but it was for the person walking by on the street.

The same is true for a website about home products. The page is not for the specs or the rankings or the links. The page is for the person who is standing in their kitchen and wondering why their toaster keeps burning the bread. If we fill the page with boxes then we are making that person’s day harder than it needs to be. We are taking their 37 seconds and we are wasting them on things that do not help them fix their breakfast.

Building Filters

It is a mistake to think that more choice is always better. More choice often leads to no choice at all because the brain gets stuck in the gears of the decision. This is why a good guide should be a filter instead of a bucket. A bucket holds everything you put into it but a filter only lets the right things through. We should be building filters. We should be looking at every box and every panel and asking if it is a tool or a splinter.

If we can do that then we can give the reader back their time. We can give them the answer they need and let them get back to their life. We can be like the man who only put three things in the window and we can trust that the reader will see them and understand them. It takes courage to leave the white space alone and it takes power to say that the meeting is over and the page is finished. But that is the only way to make something that actually lasts.

Hosting the Reader

We must remember that the reader is a guest in our digital house and we should not make them clean the floors while they are visiting. We should give them a chair and a drink and we should give them the information they asked for without making them hunt for it.

If the reader finishes the guide and they know what to buy then we have succeeded even if they never noticed the font or the ranking panel or the spec glossary. We have succeeded because we stayed out of their way. Every time I sit down to write I think about that man John Grooms and his giant map of apples. I think about how much work he did and how much he cared and how it all went to waste because he could not stop adding details.

I try to remember that my job is not to tell the reader everything I know but to tell the reader what they need to know. I try to remember that their attention is the most valuable thing they have and I have no right to steal it from them just to fill a box in a mockup.

The Road to Simplicity

It is a long road to simplicity and it is a hard road to travel because the world is always asking for more. The world wants more data and more features and more stars. But the human heart and the human eye only want the truth and they want it to be clear. If we can provide that then we have done something better than making a buying guide. We have made a connection and we have earned the trust of the stranger who just wanted to find a better way to live in their own home.