Whenever someone begins to talk about «Usability» you can time the few seconds for them to come up with «simple». For some not-so-strange reason, people think that a «good interface» equals a simple one. Mark Zuckerberg, tyrant-dictator-for-life of Facebook, responded to criticism about FB’s terrible management of privacy with “simpler controls”.
I don’t want to comment on the FB privacy issues (for that, you should as always consult danah boyd, maybe here and here). My pet-peeve right now is the idea of «SIMPLE».
And i was reading Lost Finale reviews and my whole point just vanished from my mind, so i’ll just give you the bullets and you can read a sidetracked maybe promising-but-how-to-continue-? explanation after the “read more”.
- Simple interface means you take processing away from it: Therefore, you degrade the user input instead of extracting from it.
- The illusion of simplicity comes from orthogonality — but creating orthogonality is hard and can only be done through adding methods and never by sheer cutting.
- To strive for simplicity is to search marketing slogans. A consistent design comes from grasping the full picture — even if you do it instinctively.
