Silicon Valley Musings

I have been thinking about Dr. BJ Fogg’s recent video entitled “Elements of Simplicity.” I have been thinking about capital and tunneling and how they make Web-based products and services simpler.

I would suggest expanding the resource Money to Capital. This would allow other forms of capital to be considered when developing simple products and services. Other forms of capital could include:

• social capital - favors, markers, recommendations, reviews
• political capital – endorsements, votes
• award systems - frequent flier miles

Expanding on Dr. Fogg’s traveling to Ohio example, walking to Ohio is difficult. Asking a friend to drive me would be simpler, but would cost one a fair amount of social capital.

Dr. Fogg’s framework can be used to explain benefit of the Web design strategy known as tunneling, the persuasive tool of leading users through a predetermined sequence of actions or events, step by step. Some tasks are inherently complex. Tunneling divides a complex task into steps that reach the threshold of simplicity by reducing the use of a critical resource (typically time or brain cycles) to a reasonable level.

For example, walking to Ohio would be simpler (for some even enjoyable) if it was divided into a set of day hikes where accommodations are prearranged for each evening. One of the best examples of employing tunneling to make a complex task simple is Intuit’s TurboTax.

Many Web-based products or services would benefit from evaluating Dr. Fogg’s simplicity framework, and providing different tunneling opportunities optimized for different resources: time, capital, brain cycles.