Computerworld says "LESS!"

In a mobile application, it is better to cleanly provide the 20 most important pieces of information than force people to navigate through 100 that they might never use.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9235552/Tech_hotshots_The_rise_of_the_UX_expert

LOVE the start to this article! Though, naturally, I would go even further and suggest those other 80 items may not just be irrelevant for mobile. Most are probably not really relevant at all, or at least don't provide enough benefit to justify the cost of producing and maintaining them. 

The rest of the article is interesting in its own right, though it's not really about reducing content. Enjoy!

Remove (Unnecessary) Words

Sometimes Less Content is as easy as fewer words. I was excited to find this list of 20 phrases you can replace with one word. (Thanks to Deborah Edwards-Onoro for sharing that link!)

Last summer, I was on a plane next to a man who was working on a lengthy proposal. He was working on one paragraph for most of the flight. He was stuck in overwording hell, and he couldn't get out of that mindset. (Not an uncommon problem when you have been working on something for a long time, I'm sure.) I gave him a few suggestions here and there, but after a while I just asked for his laptop. He was so frustrated that he happily handed it over. I copied & pasted his paragraph (to preserve the original) and then edited it down to about half of its original length, mostly by using suggestions like the one in the link above. My neighbor was thrilled with the end result, which was so much simpler and easy to understand on the first reading. 

Mostly, I was sad I couldn't do the same for the rest of his document. I hope he saw the value of simple wording and plain language and applied it to the rest of his editing efforts.

How about you? Any great stories about cutting copy for the better?

Fewer form fields!

LOVE this commercial for Visa's new V.me! You know, there are a lot of other ways to minimize the number of fields on your forms. (You never *have* to ask for credit card type, for example, no matter whether your customers have something like v.me or not.)

(See the others in the series here. They're awesome.)

Less Content... in apps

When decluttering your product, don't stop at your Web site! Apps benefit from decluttering, too!

Apps that focus to a smaller set of goals are genrally much better and have greater user acceptance.

Word.

And that's just a tiny nugget of the awesomeness in this article from Juhani Lehtimaeki.

http://www.androiduipatterns.com/2012/12/supporting-user-goals-makes-good-apps.html