I think the article is less about "communicating to the user" and more about "which users to target." Should we reevaluate ourselves as developers and build apps that target a larger, less tech-savvy audience?
Interesting. To me the problem seems to be that users are requesting features and making other requests because they don't understand that FeedDemon is indeed supposed to be a very simple application. It's like not understanding that MS Paint is entry level software and requesting it should have layers, advanced color management, etc.
It sounds like the problem is that at the beginning it wasn't supposed to be "a very simple application." It started out complex and then got simple over time. Which screws up user expectations -- the people who were attracted to it when it was complicated aren't going to be people put off by complexity. So they may have felt misled a bit when the complex product they chose started becoming something else.
In other words, when he decided after launching FeedDemon that what it should have been was a simpler product, Bradbury might have been better off if he'd left the "FeedDemon" name on the original, complex product and then rolled out the simpler version under a different name. That way people who picked up "FeedDemon" wouldn't feel like they were getting pushed into using "SimpleDemon" (or whatever the streamlined version ended up getting called) instead. People underestimate the power of names in setting user expectations.
(An objection to this might be the increased difficulty of maintaining two product lines, but there's a simple answer to that -- just stop updating FeedDemon. Eventually the power users who appreciate the simplicity will get the message and switch over to SimpleDemon, and those who ABSOLUTELY MUST HAVE radio button #7,131 on the preferences screen can sit on their complicated, orphaned version for life.)
> (An objection to this might be the increased difficulty of maintaining two product lines, but there's a simple answer to that -- just stop updating FeedDemon. Eventually the power users who appreciate the simplicity will get the message and switch over to SimpleDemon, and those who ABSOLUTELY MUST HAVE radio button #7,131 on the preferences screen can sit on their complicated, orphaned version for life.)
OR, you can delegate development to that power users community
