[IxDA Discuss] can we make it to easy?

[Andrei Herasimchuk]

On May 4, 2008, at 6:04 AM, Jared M. Spool wrote:

> Sorry to break it to you Andrei,  but just because *you* haven't  
> seen it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. :-)   [...]
>
> There were many product managers at WordPerfect, Lotus, and Novell  
> that had the if-we-make-it-too-easy-we'll-erode-our-market  
> philosophy. I've also met groups at MS and IBM that had a similar  
> attitude.

Ok... All of your examples thus far were when I was in high school  
playing Infocom games. I'm close to breaking 40. Any examples from the  
90s or last decade?

> One that stands out in my mind (and which you may be familiar with)  
> was MetaCreation's Kai's Power Tools and Bryce. While the designer  
> Kai Krause was a fan of hiding complexity, the tools had a huge  
> learning curve. There was at least one version that hid  
> functionality from users until they proved they could master the  
> functions already provided, then it slowly revealed new  
> functionality, much like video game.

And Metacreations lasted how long? I used to get into public arguments  
with Kai over that stuff, and I agree the way he did things was  
wrongheaded because he took them to a degree that was out of the  
useful everyday approach. And now?... He no longer does interface  
design and those products haven't lasted the test of time. At the same  
time, there were aspects of his work that were very innovative and one  
should never toss out all of Kai's work for the few mistakes he made.  
A lot of folks might not know, but Phil Clevenger did the interface  
design for Adobe Lightroom. I think Phil and the Lightroom engineers  
did a great job with it, putting in just enough visual flair and  
playfulness to Lightroom while not hiding too much out of the way and  
still keeping the interface useful. I don't think Phil would have gone  
that route had he not worked so closely with Kai all those years, the  
kind of guy who pushed interface approaches for good or for bad.

> By the way, a lot of this comes from people who do a surface  
> analysis on what makes games popular. In gaming, you can't have it  
> be too easy. There is a requirement, for a successful game, for  
> select users to have mastery that most users don't. In my  
> experience, managers who promote the if-we-make-it-too-easy-we'll- 
> erode-our-market philosophy often cite the success of video games as  
> a rationale.

The most wildly popular game of all time is World of Warcraft. Why?  
Because it's a game that appeals to casual gamers while still being  
reasonably complex. It's a game that does a real good job of only  
being as complex as it needs to be with how you play it, and yet, for  
those that get really into it, the complexity of it's inner workings  
is partly what makes the game so fascinating.

I don't care what a few people in the industry think. Complexity for  
complexity's sake is bad design. No matter what. And I still contend  
that those few who may push "complexity" as a selling point do so  
because they lack the ability to design elegant software. Nothing more.

> If I thought about it harder, I could probably come up with more  
> folks I've run into in the last 30 years with this attitude. I've  
> never seen the strategy work, but that doesn't keep it from emerging  
> from people who are trying to be a little too clever (and avoiding  
> the hard work to rethink overly complex designs).

I think you'll be hard pressed to find examples from the last two  
decades, and as you've already stated, it doesn't work. So that means  
we're probably in agreement.

-- 
Andrei Herasimchuk

Principal, Involution Studios
innovating the digital world

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