Great article by Mark Suster, still on the topic of mastering simplicity in your product (a recurring theme on this blog of late):
I've seen this numerous times. You build something. To you, who spent the last days/weeks/months working on the intricacies of your product, everything's easy. To your users - not so much:
Think about your experience at a restaurant with too many options. The owner thinks they are giving you the ability to have anything you want and you are thinking, “oy, vey, can’t you just give me a few well curated options? The less you frequent the restaurant the more this is true. You’re not a master of what’s on the menu and you don’t want to invest the time to parse through all of its complexities. So you turn to the waiter and say, “What do you recommend?” or your order from the specials.
Yet the restaurant owners, chefs and waiters know every item on the menu by heart and wonder, “What’s the big deal? Just choose what you like!”
"- How can I get an XLS report for this data?""-It' simple really, just go to the administration, select the reports tab, search for the Excel export widget, click on the button to get the export options, tick the columns you want to export and you're done!""- Yeah, right... Can you say it again?"
Mark's advice is both sound and simple: "Design for the Novice, Configure for the Pro". Go read the article to see what exactly he means by this - it's worth it.