Complexity...and the illusion of simplicity: Part One

Editor's Notes

• #2: Good evening! My name is Graham Beale, I am a user experience designer and I am here tonight to talk to you about complexity. Vote: How many developers/engineer? How many designers? How many web producers? How many of you are forced into making changes to a user interface, which made you uncomfortable about the impact? Or make changes that had an undesirable impact?
• #3: The Richard Dawkin of usabiity They believe everything should be easy to use.
• #4: I'd like to step back for a few seconds and consider the issues.  What is complexity... and how does is it affect the user?
• #5: We face complexity everyday. It can seem needless and at times incredibly fustrating! The  Traffic Light tree  was created by French  sculptor  Pierre Vivant following a competition run by the  Public Art Commissions Agency . It is situated on a  roundabout near  Canary Wharf , at the junctions of Heron Quay Bank, Marsh Wall and Westferry Road. in one of  London 's financial districts
• #6: Picture here of an alpha experiment at CERN in Switzerland. It rather looks like something doctor Emit Brown might create in Back to the Future I'm guessing the scientists involved in it understand it. This is the cutting edge of Science and technology, therefore we (the mainstream) are not expected to fully understand what is happening here.  Another way of looking at complexity is  
• #7: Concorde cockpit Pilots train for years to be able to fly this plane. To them, this picture is understandable. To us it may seem complex. But if you were to change the order of this cockpit - you could create complexity for the pilot. "If your UI even vaguely resembles an airplane cockpit, you’re doing it wrong." How would you feel if your pilot flew your plane via an iPhone app? Complexity can aid exclusivity and therefore security.
• #8: Developing a sense of meaning (semiotics): Green means go or good Red means stop or warning Every constructed complex search strings in Google? So the important distinction here is: We all have different levels of understanding based on our knowledge and experience. But we, as developers, producers and creators usually create products which are one-size fits all. Why do we do this?  Economies of scale.  If every website has different versions for experts, novices and intermediate users - we would quickly find that our ROI is dramatically reduced,
• #12: Play video
• #13: It was understable, yet the complex is a barrier to him buying it - or at least writing a good review of it. Who was the car designed for?
• #29: Over the years businesses attitudes to the   used by  tech support  operators and  computer   experts  to describe a user error as a problem that is attributed to the user's ignorance instead of a software or hardware "Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair",  when ID-Ten-T is spelled out it becomes ID10T (" idiot ")
• #45: We now pay closer attention to the learning curve of a user. Within a company there can be tension about who you focus your user interfaces at Make them too simple and you'll reduce the choice and speed required by experts ...and if you increase the number of feature, you will reduce the comprehension required by beginners. The sweet spot is the intermediate users. Beginners can learn and experts will find what they are looking for as long as its there. Programmers create interactions suitable only for experts, while the marketers demand interactions suitable only for beginners, but - as we have seen - the largest, most stable, and most important group of users is the intermediate group. Alan Cooper Programmers qualify as experts in the software they code because they have to explore every possible use case, no matter how obscure and unlikely, to create program code to handle it. Their natural tendency is to design implementation-model software with every possible option given equal emphasis in the interaction, which they, as experts, have no problem understanding. Alan Cooper.
• #46: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology) Flow  is the  mental state  of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. Mihály Csíkszentmihályi
• #47: We love complexity! Why have less, when you can have more - even when you don't understand it. Dolby,Dyson, megapixels, sale, marketing, adverts, increases sales How many of you have relatives who buy electronics they can't use? Something can be simple but confusing: light switches, pepper pots, doors (push/pull), keys. Complex things can be understandable.
• #48: How many folk have family or freinds who had VHS recorders they couldn't program to record?
• #49: How many times have you been to a friends house and they have asked to if you wan to see their new Dyson? People are proud of new technology The form of the Dyson looks extremely complicated compared to the Henry
• #50: Consumer end point and shoot camera. Its not an SLR and a professional is unlikely to use one of these.
• #51: Features - why would you choose a product with less features than another? Features means they can do more things, if they want to Features are a manufacturers way of displaying credility. e.g. Siemens washing machine " People like to surround themselves with unnecessary power " ...but  "all that unnecessary power  comes at a price" Giles Colborne
• #52: No mater what we do, we breed and encourage complexity. 
• #53: Microsoft Word 97 All toolbars visible Frustration Bad news ...but feature creep is natural. we can't stop nor should stop innovation!
• #54: Aobe tool a different approach in a previous version of Photoshop. They decided to hide some new and old features and at the same time created an additional overhead for the user
• #55: When Greg Dyke first looked at the BBC homepage he said "he could understand the politics of the BBC from the layout of the page Individual departments fought against each other to increase the impact of their content Often conflicts between Sport vs News promos vs main promo
• #56: When Amazon was founded it was an on-line book retailer. Now has diversified to sell food, toilet paper and decommissioned miltary equipotential. And its this diversity which can cause complexity in the user interface.
• #57: Sometimes businesses create product which creates a purchase complexity. Where does this product fit into my life? People will avoid additional complexity, unless it has clear benefits to their life 1980 - Care free about green issue Ironically this product is more likely to succeed today
• #58: Multiple devices on one device - great! Backlit when using in the dark
• #60: Complexity is inherent to our modern lives 3. Henry Ford:   " If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster  horses" 4 These could become your USP
• #61: Doesn't matter what you think. It matters what the person who filled the salt and pepper pot. Alan Cooper About Face