Simplicity Is Highly Overrated
1–10 of 106 posts
Re: Simplicity Is Highly Overrated
#2I suppose a counter-argument to this would be... anything Apple makes? Their non-computer products generally have fewer buttons on them than comparable phones/mp3 players.
The MiFi that was just being raved about earlier today also only has an on/off button.
Perhaps those are exceptions, rather than the rule. What makes those exceptional, though?
Re: Simplicity Is Highly Overrated
#3I suppose a counter-argument to this would be... anything Apple makes? Their non-computer products generally have fewer buttons on them than comparable phones/mp3 players. The MiFi that was just being raved about earlier today also only has an on/off button. Perhaps those are exceptions, rather than the rule. What makes those exceptional, though?
It's as though there's a sort of threshold of computer-ness, above which the general public become blithering idiots. Apple's removal of as many controls as possible make these items friendlier; but when they have been around as long as washing machines and toasters, I bet we'll find that this article applies to them as well.
Re: Simplicity Is Highly Overrated
#4I suppose a counter-argument to this would be... anything Apple makes? Their non-computer products generally have fewer buttons on them than comparable phones/mp3 players. The MiFi that was just being raved about earlier today also only has an on/off button. Perhaps those are exceptions, rather than the rule. What makes those exceptional, though?
I thought the linked article covered that point fairly well?
Re: Simplicity Is Highly Overrated
#5I agree with the author, but there is one point he seems to have overlooked; brand. If you create a brand identity consisting of easy to use and, actually, useful products. Then this issue becomes your selling point. It's all about perception and designing your products for something as fluid as human perception is like trying to wrestle with water. Instead, if you hire just the right PR then you can put that water into a nice, little container.
However, consumer products aside there are some cases where a complex, but not complicated, solution is better than the simple solution. For example, city planners have this eternal tendency to build flyovers whenever and wherever they can, but the flyovers themselves can't handle the increasing loads after a certain period of time. So, then what?
A more complex, but uncomplicated solution would be to make the traffic lights respond dynamically at a city wide scale with traffic. If you can figure out the volume of cars on a given stretch of road vs. other roads you can then use a routing algorithm to predict the best timing and path to guide the cars. It's more complex than the flyover, but it's cheaper and the leftover money can be then put into making better mass transportation in order to cut down car growth.
Further, you can figure out the volume of traffic by using accelerometers embedded in the road. Any vibration propagating through a solid medium has certain characteristics, which can be accurately predicted by studying solid acoustics. Hence, if you have an array of sensors (they are cheap) you can track the vibrations down to their respective sources. In this scenario accuracy is not an issue, a roundabout number should be good enough.
Powering the sensors isn't much of an issue either and we can put wire them to micro-controllers that crunch some of the data and sends it higher up the chain.
So, at the end we have an entire city that behaves and responds like an organism to the traffic flowing in its veins. It will be just beautiful.
The irony is that its inherent complexity ensures that people won't buy it. After all, who would want to trust solid math?
Re: Simplicity Is Highly Overrated
#6This is mainly a cultural difference between East and West.
I would say that Western people tend to define a successful product as something that's simple, functional, and easy to use.
In other cultures, the feature list defines whether a product is successful. The more the better.
Re: Simplicity Is Highly Overrated
#7[deleted]
Re: Simplicity Is Highly Overrated
#8I am a big fan of simplicity, but I recently realized that I was going too far. It is hard to make money by just concentrating on simplicity. Most cash-cows are really complex beasts. See Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, Oracle.
If the emphasis of your product is simplicity, chances are you have to compete with free software.
Joel had a presentation on this: there are dozens of simple bug trackers out there, lots of them are free, but still only a few companies make big money in the field, and their products are not the simplest ones.
I still value simplicity, it is just risky if that is the main value proposition of a product.
Also there is simplicity on the user's side and there is simplicity on the engineering side. Sometimes it implies incredibly complex and hard engineering work to enable simplicity on the user's side. Although UX is the king, I've realized that sometimes you have to make compromises even in UX to keep the underlying technology not extremely complex.
Re: Simplicity Is Highly Overrated
#9A good way to think about it is via Occam's Razor:
Which states that "Multiplicity should not be posited without necessity"
Thus the pioneering products in any new segment are simple, however as time passes new "necessities" emerge, which means the product "must" be modified to fit those needs. This also assumes a well regulated market with rational buyers (no fanboi's).
Note that this does not means that Simplicity should always be favored or The simplest solution is usually the correct answer, even if there is a single legitimate need which a simple solution cannot address, then the solution must be made complex to address that need effectively.
Evolution of Personal Computer or any non monopoly product is a good example.
Re: Simplicity Is Highly Overrated
#10I think it is possible to have a complicated product that is made easy to use and has extra features that get 'exposed' over time for your power users to find, preferably just when they need them the first time.
Complexity per-se has nothing to do with it, (over) complex problems fail just as fast as overly simplified products.
The trick is to match what your application is offering to the user in such a way that the context determines what face the application puts on it's capabilities.
Mobile phones fail spectacularly in this respect, often used features are stacked 6 down in unnavigable menu trees, never used (but commercially interesting stuff for the carriers) sits near the top.
There are many examples like that.
But there are (fortunately) also examples to the contrary.