A short tirade on simplicity

People get involved in things. Engineers get involved in their projects. Filmmakers get involved in their films. They make a million decisions, and spend thousands of hours invested in getting this thing to work perfectly.

On the other end of things, people will walk away if they can't figure out your gadget in 15 seconds or so. 15 seconds. It's very difficult to keep perspective when you've gotten the equivalent of a Masters Degree in something, but the user needs to know how to use it intuitively.

I'm guilty of this as well. I know there were some decisions I've made in my career that made sense from the perspective of someone who has worked on something for 10 hours a day for 300 days, but didn't make sense to anyone else. Those games were my life for that year of development, but to a user they may just be 1/100th of their time in a week, and 1/100th of their attention.

KISS. Simplify it. Simplify it some more. Then when you think you've made it as simple as possible, simplify it some more. Then put it in the hands of an average 40 year old office worker. I guarantee you will find that it is still too complicated.