Design of Everyday Things - Norman, Don [93]
How can users cope? How can users protect themselves from themselves? After all, as the story of the demonstration illustrates, it is the users who request the features; the designers are simply obliging them. But each new set of features adds immeasurably to the size and complexity of the system. More and more things have to be made invisible, in violation of all the principles of design. No constraints, no affordances; invisible, arbitrary mappings. And all because the users have demanded features.
Creeping featurism is a disease, fatal if not treated promptly. There are some cures, but, as usual, the best approach is to practice preventive medicine. The problem is that the disease comes so naturally, so innocently. Analyze a task, and you see how it can be made easier. Why, adding features seems so virtuous, following the very preachings of this book, simply trying to make life easier for everyone. But with extra features comes extra complexity. Each new feature adds yet another control, or display, or button, or instruction. Complexity probably increases as the square of the features: double the number of features, quadruple the complexity. Provide ten times as many features, multiply the complexity by one hundred.
There are two paths to treating featurism. One is avoidance, or at the least, great restraint. Yes, allow features that seem absolutely necessary, but steel yourself to the rigors of doing without the rest. Once a device has multiple functions, there is no way to avoid having multiple controls and operations, multiple pages of instructions, multiple difficulties and confusions.
The second path is organization. Organize, modularize, use the strategy of divide and conquer. Suppose we take each set of features and hide them away in separate locations, perhaps with dividing barriers between sets. The technical word is modularization. Create separate functional modules, each with a limited set of controls, each specialized for some different aspect of the task. The virtue is that each separate module has limited properties, limited features. Yet the sum total of features in the device is unchanged. The proper division of a complex set of controls into modules allows you to conquer complexity (as can be seen in figure 6.9).
THE WORSHIPPING OF FALSE IMAGES
The designer—and user—may further be tempted to worship complexity. Some of my students did a study of office copying machines. They discovered that the most expensive, most feature-laden machines were best sellers among law firms. Did the firms need the extra features of the machines? No. It turns out that they liked to put them in the front offices where clients were waiting—impressive machines, with flashing lights and pretty displays. The firm gained an aura of being modern and up to date, capable of dealing with the rigors of modern high technology. The fact that the machines were too complex to be mastered by most of the people in the firms was irrelevant: the copiers did not even have to be used—appearance alone did the job. Ah, yes, the worshipping of false images, in this case, by the customers.
A colleague told me of her difficulties with her home audio/television set. It was comprised of separate components, each alone not too complex. But the combination was so overwhelming that she could not use it. Her solution was to work through each of the operations she wished to perform and write explicit instructions for herself (figure 6.10). And even with these instructions, operation was not easy. Here the culprit clearly is the interactions among components.