My column in the current Business 2.0 is on the seemingly discredited art of simple complexity. Too many product designers are learning the wrong lesson from the iPod, and creating a false compromise between a rich feature set and an austere interface. In the “more is more” versus “less is more” debate, I affirmedly come down in favor of the former.
With the preceding in mind, Edward Tenner has a column in today’s New York Times arguing (meanderingly) that an inability to do anything but simple searches at sites like Google is making students stupid. Bring on the simple complexity:
Google can do more to educate users about the power — and frequent advisability — of its advanced search options. It would be a shame if brilliant technology were to end up threatening the kind of intellect that produced
it.
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