[IxDA Discuss] can we make it to easy?

[Andrei Herasimchuk]

On May 3, 2008, at 8:44 AM, Gloria Petron wrote:

> Unfortunately, the logic that overly complex systems are perhaps  
> best kept
> that way in order to promote exclusivity amongst a superintelligent  
> few is
> small comfort to those passengers on board airplanes that have been  
> flown
> into the sides of mountains. All the prestige of being a pilot goes  
> out the
> window when in the end, the FAA blames human error.

Airline control panels are complex because pilots need immediate  
access to every single control possible in cases of emergencies and  
because it's generally easier to fly a plane when everything is at  
your fingertips versus mucking with the panel to configure it while  
one is flying at the same time. Further, airplanes are amazingly  
complex pieces of machinery.

I have no idea where the concept that airline control panels are  
complex to keep it an elitist activity came from and how that gets  
meshed with the idea some things are designed to be complex to be  
elitist and exclusionary, but it's just absurd. (Sorry Jared, unless  
you cite people who've told you otherwise, I'm not buying it. I've  
never heard anyone in the software industry ever make the claim they  
makes things complicated on purpose.)

To propagate this sort of myth in a field with a bunch of designers  
makes us al look bad. Please stop.

-- 
Andrei Herasimchuk

Principal, Involution Studios
innovating the digital world

e. andrei at involutionstudios.com
c. +1 408 306 6422