complexity

consumer behavior

Don't Ask -- Observe

James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds, writes about the paradox of complexity and consumer choice in a recent New Yorker column: A recent study by a trio of marketing academics found that when consumers were given a choice of three models, of varying complexity, of a digital device,

By Jeff Atwood ·
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software development

The Cost of Complexity

There’s an interesting eleven page article in the Economist considering the cost of software complexity: The economic costs of IT complexity are hard to quantify but probably exorbitant. The Standish Group, a research outfit that tracks corporate IT purchases, has found that 66% of all IT projects either fail

By Jeff Atwood ·
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software development

Worse Is Better

Although it's a little hard to parse through, I was blown away by The Rise of “Worse is Better”, because it touches on a theme I've noticed emerging in my blog entries: rejection of complexity, even when complexity is the more theoretically correct approach. Two famous

By Jeff Atwood ·
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