What a good idea needs to succeed

In my view a good functional idea needs two additional people to succeed (in addition to the obvious implementation issues) : -

• A very good UI designer
• A HCI expert

Those two can be the same person...but what I am trying to get across is that people can only use functionality if it is "usable". You only need to look at some of the most successful companies out there...and you see that they did not succeed because of a unique idea..but usually because they made it usable for the masses.

Flickr was not the first photo sharing app on the net....skype was not the first PC-Phone or PC-PC talking app on the net. All of these recent startups need to get that one idea in their heads. If you can get a really good designer to draw your site and logo...and you can get someone to make sure your software is usable then you can hope to get end users to like your software. The more comfortable someone feels with your site the more they are likely to find it useful.

One of the keys is presenting your functionality in such a way that users can use at least 80% of the functionality without any help. If there is a steep learning curve...then people will give up. That means utilising technology for the sake of usability NOT for the cool factor. (Who can remember all those scrolling ticker tapes and java applets...spinning logos etc - those were NOT cool!).

One of the key successes of brands like Yahoo!, Google, and Firefox have been their youthful perception. Someone was mentioning (Scoble or Zawodny - can't remember) about how important it is to have a happy feeling to using your site. I've noticed that Yahoo! have started replacing dull logins with all sorts of smiling faces and general pictures to make it feel like a community. Google on the other hand go for the more boyish cheeky approach with cool looking doodles which try to give off the same sort of happy vibe.

Something that I've noticed most is that the majority of the good looking start-ups, are from people who use Macs to design and publish their site. These guys are I suppose the creative element of the geek society and so this usability and design advantage seems to bring the functional aspect of the idea right to the surface. 37 Signals create the same sort of simple design but it brings out the functionality very clearly, which I think illustrates my point exactly.

So...If u have an idea....hire a web artist/designer to create some cool looking stuff for you. Since most of us programming type can get the idea working functionally...it only needs a design minded person to take your idea to the next level. Remember...most people did not use Google initially cos it was the best...but because it was the fastest search engine on the net. (At least thats how I came to start using Google...i used to use AllTheWeb.com)