LONDON — It wasn’t my finest moment. A friend was showing me his new house in which all of the bathrooms were fitted with what looked like gloopily shaped iPods instead of taps. I switched one on, and lights appeared to reveal the controls. You could change the water’s temperature by pressing one control, and its velocity with another. But, hard though I tried, I couldn’t turn it off.
“Don’t worry,” groaned my friend. “It happens all the time.” He struggled fruitlessly with the controls, then went online to find the instructions on the manufacturer’s Web site. Guilty though I felt at having caused such a kerfuffle, I couldn’t help wondering why he’d bought those fancy digital taps. What’s wrong with the old-fashioned ones that you turn on and off by hand?
My friend had fallen victim to the curse of over-complicated design. He’d believed in the blandishments of a dazzling “innovation” that promised to make his life easier, but was so woefully misconceived that it threatened to make it harder.
You’ve probably been cursed too. Inoperable cellphones. Impenetrable Web sites. Neurotically overstyled objects. Too much packaging. Digital versions of this, that and the other. Things with esoteric functions that we’re unlikely to ever be able to pronounce correctly, let alone to want to use. We’ve all tussled with them from time to time.
There’s nothing new in this. Ever since the Industrial Revolution, designers have striven to make things that offer more than their predecessors. More speed. More power. More functions. More whatever. If the “more” is well chosen and executed, it can lead to progress; but if not, it could have the opposite effect. Who has enough time to go online to find out how to turn off a tap?
(read the full article on nytimes.com)
Tags: clean, complicated, Design, less, more