In addition to its listing of the EContent 100, the December issue of EContent Magazine has an interesting column by contributor David Scott titled The Egoless Company.

The thesis for the article emanates from a discussion David had with the founder of mediabistro.com, Laurel Touby. She attributes the success of her company to focusing on what's important to her customers, not what's important to the company.

"We're an egoless company rather than an egocentric company," she told Scott. "The egocentric one puts out what the company thinks is best rather than what the customer wants." David then argues that an egoless company starts with a product development team that works extensively with customers to design its product or service offerings. He further argues that the design of user interfaces around the way people think is critically important, and cites two examples.

"A UI (user interface) should be intuitive and easy to use. As part of the EC100 process, I tried out several applications for the first time. Two in particular stood out because of egoless UI design: Groove and Onfolio.

The Groove v3 launchpad

In each case, I downloaded the application and just started to use the product. The UI was organized around me and my problems. When I wanted to use a particular functionality, the buttons were where I'd expect them and did what I wanted.

Product development people at Groove and Onfolio managed to organize their offerings in the way I think." Thanks for the compliment, David, and kudos to our development team.

Indeed, Groove Virtual Office 3.0 is the collective effort of our product management and development teams paying close attention to the needs and desires of our early users.

Like David, we think the product hits the mark.

Give our free trial version a try and see if we think the way you think.