<snip> >I for one think that the "Less is More" mentality makes a lot of sense, >because the interfaces get so complicated that even veteran users get >lost going for features that would be somewhere around 26-50 on the >'most used' list. > >-- Marty
Well, since I often get official communications from Microsoft in which the paragraphs are separated by double returns...and forms which don't use Word's built-in form technology...I suspect the feature-set long since passed the useful set. Part of this can be laid at the doorstep of mere feature creep; but part if it is also a failure to define a product (both these issues are endemic, they're just easiest to find in MS Word). What started life as a word-processor has quickly gone through the stage of formatting tool and is striving to be a full-fledged document/publishing tool (which it actually does rather poorly). Thus, features that are necessary to one level of tool are incorporated into all of them and the increased levels of complexity often lead to failure of the tools. Issues like the occasional randomization of numbering, the persistence of changes in tracked documents and so forth result from this complexity. All of this by way of saying: One of the critical pieces of good interaction design is deciding what set of interactions your application is going to support. Who has that responsibility will often not be an IxD, but it is still the job of the IxD to call attention to the problem. Katie -- ---------------- Katie Albers [EMAIL PROTECTED] ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
