There has been a sudden mushroom of posts in response to Donald Norman’s recent essay about simplicity entitled “simplicity is overrated”. (Joel Spolsky, Nick Bradbury and many other bloggers).
I have a feeling that this discussion is getting confusing because we haven’t really pinned down what kind of simplicity we are talking about. It seems to me that Donald Norman (and most of the responses) are talking about “feature simplicity”. You also have “usage simplicity”.
“Feature simplicity” refers to keeping the number of different features a product offers down to a minimum. This keeps menus nice and tidy; and since there are less features, there are less things to mess up, so it’s easier for the designer to be sure they have done a good job at designing the user experience.
“Usage simplicity” is something different. This is a “perceived” simplicity, i.e. how much simpler it makes your life. There might be a hell of a lot of complexity going on back stage to provide this. Consider auto-focus in cameras. It adds to the number of features, but at the same time it makes your life easier. Also consider Gracenote’s CD track identification service that is integrated into iTunes. You stick a CD in, it automatically looks up the names of the tracks online and shows the names. A lot of users probably don’t realize this is happening but still enjoy its benefits.
It’s important we don’t confuse the two. It interests me that this is exactly the kind of point that Donald Norman would normally make, but chose not to in his recent essay.
You seem to be the person of simplicity. You’ve chosen an excellent subject and provided very clearly the definition and the benefits we can get from it.
Learning much from you
With great appreciation
I would like to add a third point of simplicity: Let’s say “handling” simplicity. What do I mean?
One example: I’ve got two mobile phones. You can phone and write SMS, both have a camera with autofocus. In short: both have the same features und their usage (like in the definition above) is the same.
Now the difference: If I want to write an SMS I have to go with mobile phone 1 through different menus – press, hit, press, press, hit – now I am able to write a SMS. With mobile phone 2 that goes faster – press, hit.
Now imagine that mobile phone 2 offers all features with the same electronic aid (so called “usability”) with less than 2 presses and hits. Mobile phone 1 offers the same features und usability with 5 presses and hits in average.
In principle I would prefer mobile phone 2. The handling is much better…
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