Book Reading #51 - Living With Complexity

Title:
Chapter 1: Why Is Complexity Necessary?
Chapter 2: Simplicity is in the Mind

Reference:

Summary:
Chapter 1: Why Is Complexity Necessary?

Life is complex.  Norman distinguishes between complex and complicated.  Complexity is how the world shapes things and complicated is how our mind shapes things.  Complexity is also seen as involving the design of a system as well as our innate skill in recognizing how to use it.

In order to reduce complexity and complication we seek to simplify.  We do this by organization and familiarity.  Nature and coffee makers can be complex.  Food, farming, language, and music can be complicated but all have evolved over time so that one can put the blame on the world.

Chapter 2: Simplicity is in the Mind

Chapter 2 dealt with conceptual models.  We often simplify things in our own minds in order to bridge the gap between complicated structures and the way we envision them.  They help us organize our thoughts about something.  The book states again that complexity is a matter of the environment and the simplicity is within us.  If we understand something to the extent that we have mastered it, it seems simple to us because we have the experience.

Just because something seems simple doesn't mean it is.  Reduction of buttons does not always lend itself to simplicity.  Different cultures also have different notions of how a device should look - simple or complex - and that adds to how one should design these products too.



Discussion:
I was very disappointed to find out we were reading another Donald Norman book.  He is often beating a dead horse with his continual citation of different examples.  I am unsure where he is trying to go with this book because I know that I live in complexity.  That is very easy to see.  What is this book trying to say to me?

This seems like the fourth or fifth time we have talked about simplicity, conceptual models, and the like.  It is getting very redundant.  I think Norman would have been better off reducing the number of examples per book and then putting all of them together into one book.