Keep it Simple

Pictured to the right is the remote control for my DVD player at home. Why post such a fascinating image for my two faithful readers of DigitalEdu to peruse? It is a great illustration of something I've been thinking of a lot lately. Simplicity.

There are 41 buttons on the remote for my DVD player. We use it maybe once or twice a week and we use it to simply play movies. I need buttons to play, stop and pause. I have no idea what the other buttons are supposed to do and I don't have the time or inclination to find out. All I want to do is play movies. I have a button to "Prog" and another one to "A-B". Because there is so much clutter on the device, I rarely hit the right button the first time. It's not like I'm a Luddite - I love technology but I just don't want to change my behavior to match their device. I want their device to adapt to me. Why can't there just be one button? When the DVD isn't playing, the button would start, while it's running it will pause, while it's paused, it would stop. That way I only need to hit one button and the device will change the behavior based on my current context.

It's obvious to me why the device is like this - the engineers were too lazy to put more effort into the user interface and the project manager didn't view it as the end user - he/she viewed it like an engineer. Compare this kind of device with the iPhone. There's a good reason people become so fanatical over Apple products. Apple puts an enormous amount of work into the user interface (the iPhone has one button on the front and the software adapts to the current activity the person is performing). They make it simple, they make it elegant and they make it fun. I have recently started using a MacBook Pro after being away from a Mac for a long time and it is a beautiful machine to use.

I also know why more devices are not like the iPhone. It is a lot of work to make complex activities appear simple. That's true whether it's hardware, software, or a teacher trying to explain a complex problem to her students. Last Monday we went live with a new registration system and we spent a lot of time working on the interface and trying to make it as simple and straightforward as possible. We spent hours going over every form widget and every word to see if we could make it cleaner and simpler. We conducted numerous focus groups with students and staff to find out what was important, and what wasn't. So far, the results look encouraging, but we're keeping a close eye on the statistics to see if students are using it with more accuracy and getting through the process faster.

I would much rather have our systems look like the iPhone than my DVD remote. Keep it simple.