The iPod didn’t just improve on earlier music players. It collapsed a lot of complexity into one object that felt good to use. The win was emotional as much as technical.

The question I keep asking

What would that look like for someone in a low-tech field who starts work before dawn and has no patience for dashboards? My hunch is that I won’t find it by adding features to existing tools.

How I’d go looking

• Start from a blank slate instead of an existing product.
• Learn what the person wants to feel, for example understood and in control of their work.
• Look for the one simple thing, then protect it from feature creep.

What I don’t know

This is a hunch built on one famous example. It could be that simplicity wins in music players but not where the work is messier, and I’d want to find a counterexample.