To me, the terms ‘user-friendly’ and ‘simple’ are synonymous to ‘motherly love’: it’s difficult to be against it, since they resonate so much with what people want. However, by striving to simplicity, it’s easy to believe it is interchangeable with: leaving things out. That train of thinking, however, might become a prime complicator instead.

For example, the ubiquitous CSV (comma separated values) file format is an extremely easy protocol, delivering a minimum of features. However, because of these properties, it is error-prone and fragile in relationship with versioning.

Another example might be a word processor. Imagine we’d take styling and page formatting out. It surely would be easier to work with, initially, and many configuration settings could be removed. However, it will leave the power user stranded, since he cannot communicate his creations without incurring a loss.

On the other hand, professional CAD tools can be difficult to learn and might seem complicated at first. However, the user can adapt and be empowered by new tools. Once he has mastered the basic concepts, he might even think of the tool itself as rather simple, allowing his conceptual creations to flow unconstrained into digital reality.

So, I think we should be careful in how we define the word ‘simple’. We should empower the end-user to learn and be enthralled by our systems, so their potential is exponentiated by our tools, instead of being limited by them. We shouldn’t shy away from leading our users into the conceptual mind-world that we call software.