I want things to be simple. I want fewer features—I just want them to be the features I use. I want visuals to be uncluttered, even sparse. I want to see only the information I actually need.
The world doesn’t appear to agree with me. There seems to be very little penalty for an overstuffed interface; it might even be what people expect.
When I design things, I’m asking myself not just How do I organize the interface so that it’s intuitive? but also What can I get rid of?
Every once in a while, I check in on this impulse. Is this a genuine desire? Or am I just taking the easy way? Do I design things that do less because I don’t want to be bothered with making a richer set of features?
I’m comforted by finding that the considered answer is no.
As a user (and I am, like all of us, a user first), I don’t want to be bothered with a richer set of features. I own a copy of the sagging behemoth that is Microsoft Word, but I do almost all of my writing in a slightly souped-up text editor called Focus Writer. If I have to use one of those “feature-rich” applications, the first thing I try to do is turn off, hide, or delete the things I don’t have any use for, so that it’s easier to access the things I do use.
Moreover, keeping it simple (done right) isn’t easier. To scale down, to reduce your product to what is necessary rather than larding it with capabilities—that’s difficult. Very, very difficult.