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. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
c. +1 408 306 6422
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