In the early nineties, I knew and worked with several Apple Mac users. They would enthuse about how easy and uncomplicated Macs were. At the time I was building convention exhibits which depended on esoteric input and output devices, the kind of hardware and interfaces that really didn’t mesh well with Macs. I railed against the “closed” nature of Macs. That you needed special tools to get in the thing. That they used non-standard connectors, and that annoying jack-in-a-box ResEdit program that was essential to get the machine to do anything non-standard. But being a student of good interface design, I recognized that there was a useful logic to dictating the “correct” format of dialog boxes. It meant that a user’s experience would be consistent across different packages. This was why non-computer-science users liked these machines, there was a constancy about their interaction. It made sense. To contrast with the legendary MS-DOS message “Abort, Retry, Ignore?”, really? Did anyone ever get something useful, by selecting “Ignore”? Did anyone ever really code to handle an “Ignore”? There was a design rule that Mac dialog boxes should always have no more than two options. Simple, right? There were exceptions. Kai Software had a product called Bryce. Everyone raged about how great the interface was, how innovative, how exciting. It wasn’t. It had a hidden menu system, options only revealed themselves when you moused over a part of the screen. Beautiful? Maybe. But ridiculously hard to use. Some users seemed to revel in its obscure nature, but it failed on a usability level. Using it felt like you were playing Myst, randomly moving the mouse around to see if it changed icon, or revealed an option. Fun in a game, utter crap in a software interface.
You see, people like simple stuff. The number of people who couldn’t program their VCR (video cassette recorder, for you younger readers) is legendary, the flashing “12:00” was always a dead giveaway at your grandparent’s house. Someone came up with a great idea in TV guides, a number next to the show you wanted to record, which you entered on your remote, and Bingo! the show was programmed. This was even improved with a bar code, and the remote updated to include a scanner, eliminating the embarrassment of entering the code for Care Bears, and ending up with Showtime After Midnight programming. Simple is good, it encourages people to use products more, and more use means more money.
Google’s search, when it was first released onto the world was simple. Just a text box. They liked it. Critics praised its simplicity. Users loved its simplicity. The page loaded in a flash, you typed in your search, and chances are the thing you were looking for was on the first page of returned results. All that “complex” search language that you’d learned in AltaVista was unnecessary. Google just worked. So why is it all now messed up? There are slabs of Javascript all over the main page (about 22KB). You can actually start typing before it’s fully loaded. As soon as you start typing, the page re-configures itself, the text box moves. As you move the mouse away from the text, you roll over another “hot” area and half the page explodes with content giving you a preview, only to vanish immediately as you mouse out. “What the hell was that? Did you see that? Did I just have a pop-up?”, you can see the less technology savvy grandparents backing away from the keyboard already. Oh, I’m sure it’s clever, I’m sure there’s a reason, but listen, you just made it more complicated. You have just alienated an albeit small group of users, but you made something that didn’t need to be any more than a text box more complicated. In the ’90s, AltaVista got a “Webby” award for placing an additional search box at the bottom of the results page. Something so simple and obvious, was truly appreciated as useful. Google just took their textbox at the bottom of screen away. Why? How could something that was so well received when it was implemented that it got an award be deemed no longer necessary? Was it to fit in with Google’s new look? Was it a loss of functionality to fit a visual design shift? Was it elevating form over function?
The advantages of simple interfaces have been demonstrated time and time again. It might even be accurate to say that Apple’s current status is a direct result of this line of design. Although, I’d be happy if someone could explain iTunes’ chaotic user interface to me! Simple is good. Simple works. Simple is efficient. Ask anyone who’s tried to pay their AT&T wireless phone bill from a weak wi-fi connection in Mexico, how much they enjoyed waiting for that Adobe Flash intro to download and play on the opening page, and I think you’ll begin to get the picture.
You see, everyone’s getting in on the game. Facebook just announced “Timeline”, a new interface to your page, and what’s this? A customizable header? Part of the popularity of Facebook was its simple, clean interface. Everyone’s page looked pretty much the same. Now we have what looks like the start of an attempt to make Facebook as customizable as, say MySpace, and that’s a great looking site, right? I don’t know what the equivalent of the flashing “12:00” on a VCR is for a website, but I do know that less is more when it comes to interface design, and if you were famous for having less and start adding more, you’re probably making a mistake.
