Computers shouldn’t be unusable. You don’t need to know how to work a telephone switch to make a phone call, or how to use the Hoover Dam to take a shower, or how to work a nuclear-power plant to turn on the lights. — Scott McNealy (via Usernomics)

Contrary to popular belief, one of the biggest challenges we face when developing an application isn’t deciding what features to put in. It’s what features not to put in.

At least once a month, we get some of our users together to play with the latest prototypes we’ve created. But guess what? Few of those actually make it out of the lab. And that’s a good thing, if we put every feature in, you’d need a user manual bigger than the phone book just to get started!

So why do we hold back on all those funky features? As Kathy Sierra puts it, we want to make sure you can kick ass without having to spend too long below the Suck Threshold. In other words, keeping it simple means you can have a fun, enjoyable experience right away.

Even if we liked complicated, whizzy things with lots and lots of buttons, it just wouldn’t make sense to attempt it on mobile. We want fast, easy-to-digest content when we’re on the move, right?

With this in mind, we still want to add the features you’re most interested in. Is it the ability to post your search results to Jaiku or to send them by SMS? What would make your experience more fun? We’re always listening and we will put the best ideas in place.

If you want to make a suggestion, you can…

• leave a comment right here on the blog
• pop your ideas in the feedback form (you’ll need to register first)
• or drop me an email at vero@taptu.com

What would the mobile search engine of YOUR dreams do? (Other than telepathically order the right flavour of ice cream just when you want it, of course. We’re working on that one.)

Over the course of the past few days, something has really hit me when chatting with other mobile addicts and watching visitors walk over to our stand, while I’m perched on a bar stool at our stand: Very few of the people at this conference are using a single device to answer all their needs. The iPhone for web browsing, the N95 for video shoots, the E61 to get that quick blog post done. Pockets bulging with shiny gadgets.

Unquestionably, Mobile World Congress is not a reflection of normality or the average mobile user, and most people don’t have the money, the need or the interest to have multiple devices, but as mobile geeks, we can’t seem to find a single device that ticks every box.

I’m not sure we’ll ever reach a point where a phone does everything we want to to do without being the size of a briefcase or some crazy “Go go Gadget phone”, and if there is such a device, it certainly isn’t being unveiled here this year. Simplicity is compromised by cramming too many options in a menu, portability is hindered by screen or keypad size, and so on…

What would your dream device have and not have?