Why Life Can’t Be Simpler
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Why Life Can’t Be Simpler
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Re: Why Life Can’t Be Simpler
#2There are many things in life that cannot be simpler without losing some level of choice that we value, I'll grant that.
Nobody who has ever dealt with the United States Government, or any US State government, can tell me with a straight face that the principle is absolute.
Or, put another way, I'll gladly give up all the choices that lead to misery every time I deal with the IRS or DMV in exchange for things to be as simple as they are in other countries I've visited.
Choice is not the only cause of complexity.
Re: Why Life Can’t Be Simpler
#3The quotes referenced in this article “Whether something is complicated is in the mind of the beholder" and "The total complexity of a system is a constant" appear to me to be contradicting. How can the complexity be both relative and constant simultaneously? Personally, I favor the former. An operating system, for example, seems to me to dramatically lower total complexity since a few hundred (thousand?) people can maintain it. Meanwhile, without operating systems how many hundreds of thousands of people would it take to maintain our modern tech if we all had to work on bare metal?
Re: Why Life Can’t Be Simpler
#4The article leads with a quote by Don Norman.
I read his book "The design of everyday things" after hearing a lot of people speak highly of it.
I found it quite underwhelming.
Anyone have insight of what people think is so noteworthy about that book?
Re: Why Life Can’t Be Simpler
#5The article leads with a quote by Don Norman. I read his book "The design of everyday things" after hearing a lot of people speak highly of it. I found it quite underwhelming. Anyone have insight of what people think is so noteworthy about that book?
I am not a designer/UX person but still thought I would give it a go. I couldn't get through more than 30% of it because of how boring and repetitive it was.
Re: Why Life Can’t Be Simpler
#6There are many things in life that cannot be simpler without losing some level of choice that we value, I'll grant that. Nobody who has ever dealt with the United States Government, or any US State government, can tell me with a straight face that the principle is absolute. Or, put another way, I'll gladly give up all the choices that lead to misery every time I deal with the IRS or DMV in exchange for things to be a…
You do this transparently when you “choose” from a list of preset internet providers or wireless plans.
In any event, Governments are bad examples because they serve more interests than just “customers.” They are not businesses and it is destructive to compare them as such
Re: Why Life Can’t Be Simpler
#7The article leads with a quote by Don Norman. I read his book "The design of everyday things" after hearing a lot of people speak highly of it. I found it quite underwhelming. Anyone have insight of what people think is so noteworthy about that book?
Same, my thoughts are its one of those things that it was revolutionary at the time but the ideas have become so distributed now so it seems obvious. Originally published in 1988, windows 3.0 was released in 1990, it was published when MS-DOS was king.
Re: Why Life Can’t Be Simpler
#8The article leads with a quote by Don Norman. I read his book "The design of everyday things" after hearing a lot of people speak highly of it. I found it quite underwhelming. Anyone have insight of what people think is so noteworthy about that book?
For me it seemed like it fleshed out a lot of ideas about what makes good UX. I didn't think it was earth shattering but I think back to it often when I interact with the various items in my life. It's nice for someone to explicitly explain something you intuitively grasp but can't clearly explain.
Re: Why Life Can’t Be Simpler
#9Life can't be simpler yet because systems do not yet understand the consequences of their actions.
The first step to advanced simplicity is making it easy to do again what you did already. This is the "reorder last shopping cart" level.
The next step is to have a good understanding of what people are likely to re-order, and how often. Some marketing systems are starting to get this. If, last time, you ordered a hammer and some nails, next time you should be offered more nails, but not more hammers.
One obstacle to advanced simplicity is cross-vendor integration. This is why more than one remote is often necessary. There are entertainment systems that self-configure when plugged in, but only from one vendor.
Re: Why Life Can’t Be Simpler
#10The article leads with a quote by Don Norman. I read his book "The design of everyday things" after hearing a lot of people speak highly of it. I found it quite underwhelming. Anyone have insight of what people think is so noteworthy about that book?
Wow! I was his student many, many years ago. I had to take his class because he was the head of our department. I thought I was going to do something very different with my life and I wasn't very interested, except that he was a great lecturer. In retrospect he was easily the most influential professor I ever had.
If his work in something like "Design of Everyday Things" seems underwhelming I would guess that is because it has become so influential that you already have absorbed a lot of the ideas in the book. You certainly live in a world that is slightly shaped by them. As a teacher, Norman constantly taught through anecdotes about the way things work.
ATMs used to give you money and then after they gave you money they would return your card. The model for the bank was take card, do transaction, return card. The problem was people kept leaving their cards in the machine. Donald Norman pointed out that the "mental model" for people was go to atm-> get money. Once the last step is accomplished the customer doesn't thinks they are done. They don't want to keep thinking about the ATM. "Mental Model" of an interface is a term you may have heard and he coined.
Now every time I go to an ATM and it gives me my card back before the money, I think of him.