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A thought on simplicity and complexity
Working for over a decade as a customer experience consultant, I've had plenty of opportunity to talk about simplicity and complexity.
Often it's a good-vs-bad setup. Especially in technology, the interface should be simple - too many tools are complex and hard to use!
But complexity can be good, too... an authentic good experience is often rich and multilayered and hard to describe: complexity is good.
The problem is that it can be difficult to pin down what, exactly, we mean by "simple" and "complex." Thus The arc of complexity, a long piece written recently by Kevin Kelly, is especially welcome - taking a scientific look at complexity - in the universe, in biological evolution - to see if there's a way to describe it accurately. (Turns out it's harder than it looks.)
Interesting... I'm so used to people (especially in tech) saying that "complexity is bad." Refreshing to hear a different POV.
I like to think about it this way: a complex personality? good. a complex web site? bad.
It isn't that complexity in and of itself is bad, but that _unnecessary_ complexity is bad.
"Simple" is just an easy way to make it tangible. Ie, if you can make it simpler, then you should. This doesn't mean remove complexity (as in features) but means remove the things that don't add value (as in unnecessary).
I've long maintained that an interactive experience of any kind should be easy to use, but also worth using. That is, it should have enough substance - or complexity - to be worth even a minimized level of effort to reach it.