The Temptation of Complexification
The title of this blog notwithstanding, complexification for complexity's sake is an awful thing. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in application design. Yesterday, I was invited to participate in a "30-minute" conference call with the developers of a web-based application. An hour and a half later, I was still on the phone, listening as the application specs grew while
feature creep ran amok.
Some people wanted to retrieve and modify data on the application's first screen; some wanted the feature in three other places. The compromise, not surprisingly, was to place it in all four locations. By catering to each user's needs, however, the application's logic and structure took a turn for the worse.
When technology enables features to be added easily in multiple places, the temptation to take the path of least resistance may ironically create products that are overly complex, non-intuitive, and hard to use.
Albert Einstein is remembered for many complex achievements, but his Zen-like maxim on the balance between simplicity and complexity is often overlooked: "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." Too often we err on the side of complexity, failing to realize the full cost of overshooting the goal.