Are Apple’s designs too simple?
Interesting post by Bruce Tognazzini about whether Apple’s software product design ethos is too simplistic.
Now (confession time) not being an Apple aficionado I can’t really pass comment, however his general points seem quite valid. One of the founding principles of Interaction Design is to create solutions that are eminently understandable by the novice, but grow as the user become more competent then expert.
So, we aim to make the initial state as simple and as closely aligned to the user’s mental model as possible. Simplicity does not mean lack of functionality (which I think could be the issue with Apple), it means a fast initial learning curve and consideration of the number of concepts a user needs to understand.
However, the product should have a built in path to higher proficiency, facilitating enhanced functionality, high speed interaction and minimal application feedback as the user requires it.
Tognazzini seems to be implying that Apple software products are well suited to ‘Leading the novice’ but fall short on ‘empowering the expert’ . Certainly, in the past, Apple have not really carried out much in the way of design research. Could this be at the heart of some of these issues?
Do any of you Apple users out there think Tog’s argument is justified?
In a word, yes. I agree that Apple tend not to follow through, in terms empowering the expert. A big part of how they cater for the novice–and a core part of their brand–is making things simple and hiding the complexity of the computer from the user. Which is great, but often I find that when you do want to go beyond that, you can’t.
Software such as iLife ‘06 (which is the version I’m still using) quite often leaves you wanting more…more control, more precision, more information. You get very few options, so the application does come off looking overly simplistic.
Now this might be fixed in iLife ‘09 or in MobileMe (the supposedly “excellent” suite of web applications) but I haven’t used them myself. I also don’t have an iPhone (yet) but perhaps this has fixed the problem too, by making easy for novices but offering progressively more power as you get more comfortable with it.
All of this might explain why Apple products (hardware and software) continually attract n00bs and increasingly lose experts…just look at the amount of people jumping ship from Mac to PC in the fields of graphic design and the like, over the last 10 years.
My frustration with Apple products is that they DON’T fit themselves to the user. They have one single way you can use them, and you must learn it - you fit yourself to the One True Apple Way. They are pretty consistent, so once you learn that way you will find subsequent products easy to pick up. But woe betide you if you don’t like their way.
Case in point: I hate MacOS’s “never maximise a window” paradigm. I like maximising windows. I like to use the whole screen. I like to blank out the noise of other apps I’m not currently using. But there’s no maximise in MacOS, it resizes to the width that *the computer* thinks the window should be. Would it kill them to just put in a button that maximises the window? I mean really…
See also: “we think it’s cool to be able to sync your ipod automatically!” I think so too, but I don’t want it to attempt to sync with my work machine when I plug it in - so unfortunately I can’t sync it at all. Where’s the option to say “only sync to this one library”? It’s not even something I’d consider an especialy advanced option.
I think sometimes the simplicity of the default interface has slowly drifted into a lack of any further features. Meanwhile of course, Windows went the other way… turns out operating systems still suck!
Sometimes “hiding the complexity” makes even seemingly simple things hard to do unless someone shows you how e.g. turning the computer off. Once shown how though it all seems so simple and elegant.
[...] written a post on whether Apple’s approach to interface design is too simplistic over at the USiT Blog. It’s a discussion piece around Bruce Tognazzin original [...]
Just as an aside, this is an interesting video explaining how some of apples interfaces aren’t really that easy to use. Note for those who don’t know the onion is a parody site.
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/apple_introduces_revolutionary
http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/apple_hard_at_work_making