Okay, so I wanted to talk about this Matt Rudick thing today. It wasn’t some big planned project, you know? It just sort of happened. I was stuck on this design thing for work, felt like I was hitting a wall, trying the same old stuff over and over. Browsing around, looking for anything really, and I stumbled across some stuff attributed to a Matt Rudick. Not sure if it was his actual work or someone talking about him, honestly.
What stuck out was this idea about simplifying the user flow. Seemed obvious, right? But the way it was presented, or maybe just the examples I saw, made me think differently. It wasn’t about fancy features; it was about stripping things back to the bare essentials. Made me look at my own messy project with fresh eyes.
Getting Hands Dirty
So, the next Monday, I decided, okay, let’s try this. Forget adding stuff, what can I remove? I opened up the wireframes we had. They were complicated, loads of steps for what should have been simple actions. I just started deleting boxes and arrows, man. Felt kinda reckless at first.
- First, I targeted the signup process. Way too many fields. Axed half of them.
- Then, the main dashboard. Cluttered with widgets nobody used. Simplified it to show just the top 3 tasks.
- Checked the navigation. Cut down the main menu items.
It wasn’t technical work, just me, a whiteboard (well, a digital one), and a virtual eraser tool. I spent a good couple of days just cutting, trimming, rethinking the path someone would take. Argued with myself a lot. “Is this too simple now? Will people miss that button?”
The Messy Middle
Then came the hard part: convincing the team. Showed them the stripped-down version. Initial reaction? Skepticism. “Where did feature X go?” “Isn’t this losing functionality?” That took some talking. Had to explain the ‘why’ behind it, connect it back to user frustration we’d seen in feedback. Referenced that Rudick inspiration – focusing on the core job, not the edge cases.
We decided to prototype just one part of the simplified flow and test it internally. Not even with real users yet, just folks in other departments. It was rough. Some people got lost because they were used to the old way. Others loved the clean look. Feedback was all over the place. It wasn’t a smooth ride, definitely some bumps.
What Happened In The End
We ended up implementing about half of my simplified ideas. The signup process got way shorter, which was a clear win. The dashboard stayed a bit more complex than my version but cleaner than before. It wasn’t a perfect “Matt Rudick” outcome, whatever that might be. It was a compromise, shaped by team input and existing habits.
But the whole exercise, sparked by randomly seeing that name and idea, changed how I approach these problems now. I start by thinking about what to remove, not what to add. It’s less about following a specific person’s method rigidly and more about absorbing the core principle. That whole thing started because I was stuck and saw something attributed to Matt Rudick. Funny how things work out sometimes. Just gotta keep trying stuff, I guess.
