Google knows it. 37signals knows it. Heck, I even know it.

Do you know it?

37signals is making a small change to Backpack that enables users to rearrange entire lists, instead of just the list items themselves. Also, you’ll soon be able to drag items from one list to another. Is this going to revolutionize Backpack? No. Was everyone complaining about the inability to do these things. Not at all. Will this get new users to sign up? Nope.

Will it make them more money? Sure it will. Because existing customers will keep using Backpack.

Google did a bunch of research and managed to determine that increasing the number of search results on a page reduced the speed of the page, and this resulted in a 20% reduction of searches and ad revenue. Turns out that leaving their results at 10-per-page is a detail that makes people happy and that changing it is very, very bad for business. Lesson learned. They’ll think about details like that on every project now.

The major features of an application are the ones that make it marketable, but the details are what make it competitive. Details are what make passionate users. Details are what make up that elusive quality we’re all after as software designers and developers. You know.

The X-factor.

The small things are usually the best part of an application. Companies should focus on them. They shouldn’t expect fanfare and ticker-tape parades for doing so, because small features subsequently get little attention, but they’re absolutely vital.

Big features will get people to sign up, but the details are what will keep your users happy for years to come.

Etre, the user experience design firm with the great blog, scores another point for why we should ignore users when designing products.

Just remember, a whole bunch of people decided before they ever tried using an iPod that it would never sell.

Nobody knows what they really want until they get it.

One user says he wants < insert feature here >, and the next says she wants the opposite. As I said in the book, you don’t get real answers by asking users what they want, you get them by watching what they do.

The lesson to be learned: never, ever, make a change to an application based on the comments of a few users. Just like one good default is better than 100 options, one good vision is better than 100 user comments.

Next Wednesday, November 22nd, I’ll be presenting a session based on my book, Designing the Obvious, for the Flash and Multimedia Users Group of Arizona, and it’ll be broadcast over that fabulous “interweb” thing via Adobe Connect (formerly Breeze), so you’re all invited!

The session will cover seven principles of web application design and how to leverage them to consistently reproduce the qualitites found in many great web apps. I’ll also show off a few humorous examples of good user experiences gone bad.

To attend the session, bookmark this page.

Thirty minutes or so before the meeting starts, just log in as a guest and the moderator, Mr. John Bland (the manager of the group), will let you in.

The session starts at:
5:30pm PST
6:30pm MST
7:30pm CST
8:30pm EST

… and runs for about an hour and 15 minutes. See you there!

This video might just be the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. It’s a two-man musical team performing their own version of U2’s “One”, in celebration of the merging of two banks. And they look serious.

No, this isn’t a post about how to use it, but it is a post about Kris Hadlock’s new book, Ajax for Web Application Developers.

Kris is an excellent developer and is, well, more than a little obsessed with Ajax. I met Kris through an old employer, and since then we’ve gone on to build Dashboard HQ together (still very much on the move, by the way). Kris is one of those rare geeks who really values a quality user experience, and because of that, his book is sure to become a standard on developers’ desks.

Kris is also following up each of my new Designing the Obvious clinics for InformIT (see the first one here) with a tutorial on how to build something from the review, so be sure to check that out as well.

Congratulations, Kris. This time, the spotlight is all yours. Enjoy it!