Simplify. That’s the watchword.

Just this morning, I finished reading a ten-part article by Andreas Kluth in The Economist about how computers are too complex for the average person to operate. Granted, this is not exactly groundbreaking stuff. But, to someone like me, whose job it is to make the complex seem simple, the article expressed a real concern among computer users worldwide, and had me on the edge of my seat through all 12,229 words.

Mike, my newest co-worker at Microsoft, shared a prime example. Having recently moved to Redmond, Mike bought a nearby house that had been built and customized by a former Microsoftee. “It’s got a central computer that runs the whole house,” Mike explained. “Everything from the thermostat to the lights to the living room blinds goes through this computer.” Being a binary brain himself, Mike kind of likes the idea of having one computer do everything — except that he can’t operate the infernal contraption. “There are no instructions,” he said. “The blinds are set to open every morning at nine o’clock, but what if I want them opened at eight? I’ve figured out how to make them go up, but then they automatically come back down again.” The real problem comes on a warm day when the computer somehow thinks it’s a cold day and dutifully fires up the furnace. Mike, who has been steeped in technology for longer than most of us, gave up fiddling with the cotton pickin’ device and tried calling the software company. “They wanted $150 just to come out and look at it,” he said. Still no resolution.

Many of us share Mike’s frustration. Whether it’s a proprietary home control system or a writable DVD drive, too often plug and play doesn’t really mean “plug and play.” It means “plug, then download the latest drivers, then walk through the install wizard, then configure it for your system, and then hope it plays.” Or, if you prefer, plug and “pray.”

Not that we haven’t made progress. Think back about 20 years when your mom, dad, aunts, uncles, and skateboard buddies wouldn’t even consider buying a personal computer because they had no idea what to do with that C prompt. “Just memorize a few DOS commands,” you told them. “DIR, CD, EXIT… is that so hard?” Then came the GUIs like Windows and OS/2 and they were all hooked. No commands to remember, just point and click. It took colors and pictures to make the PC simple enough for the average person to embrace.

As technology advances, we need to drive that same simplicity into our new products. In his article, Kluth correctly points out that the answer is not in decreasing a product’s underlying complexity, but in hiding that complexity behind a simple-to-use interface. That’s the formula for a successful consumer product. You pick up a telephone receiver and you get a dial tone. You turn a key in your car’s ignition and the engine starts. You press a remote control button and Regis Philbin is in your living room.

Take Google. You and I don’t need to understand how Google searches more than 8 billion Web pages and sorts them according to relevance. We don’t need to be experts in
relational databases or metadata or SQL. All we need to know is what we want to find on the Web. Anyone with five minutes of Internet experience can understand the Google interface. It’s simple and effective. And it’s made Google, the Johnny-come-lately of search engines, the most popular engine on the Internet.

A publisher once asked me to write a book about a certain networking technology. “How long will it take you to write 200 pages?” he asked.

“About three months,” I said. “But give me another month and I’ll get it down to 150.”

So it is with writing software, designing a user interface, or manufacturing a peripheral device. Making it simple is hard work. But if we want to continue to add users to our worldwide family, it’s necessary work. And we’d do well to heed the words of G. K. Chesterton: “The simplification of anything is always sensational.”