When Is "Good Enough" Good Enough?

Wired has a nice article ("The Good Enough Revolution") discussing various technologies that are technically a step backward, but functionally a step forward (e.g., MP3, the Flip video camera, the Predator UAV).

As the article points out, the shared key success factor is accessibility. The traditional engineering definition of a better mousetrap tends to focus on how well it catches mice, not on how easy/fun it is to configure, deploy, and empty.

For IT-intensive technologies, Moore's Law and standardization is allowing engineers to shift the focus of the design effort away from technical considerations and toward usability. Whether engineers are equipped to exploit this opportunity is unclear...most have little training (and often little interest) in the much softer challenge of understanding the social/cognitive use context.

So, when is "good enough" good enough? There's probably no general answer/heuristic...but the question may help engineers be more aggressive in pursuing minimalist/bare-bones solutions that revolutionize a use context with commodity technologies, instead of pursuing revolutionary technologies for commodity use contexts.