Title: The Obvious, the Easy, and the Possible
Context: It’s not a question of minimizing complexity, it’s rather about optimizing obviousity [sic].
Synopsis: They never said it would be easy. In this case, “they” are most likely “us” (if “us” are “we” and “we” are “UX Designers”). Obviously, how could it possibly be? What with all of the features and workflows and UI and functionality they ask us to put into our designs. The more overhead you add, the greater the complexity —or, more accurately — the less the simplicity. And we want simplicity. Our users want simplicity. We all want it the way a dog wants that last bite of your roast beef sandwich (note to self: stop eating lunch in front of the dog). But is it even possible? Or are we just dogs chasing our own tail? (Note to self: stop tying last bite of roast beef sandwich to dog’s tail.) Maybe there is a way to balance ease-of-use in favor of hard-to-use even in the most grinding scenarios. All we have to do is be obvious which will make things easy and that’s got to be possible, right?
Best Bit: “Making something obvious is expensive because it often means you have to make a whole bunch of other things less obvious. Obvious dominates and only one thing can truly dominate at a time.”
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