{"id":1145,"date":"2021-06-25T16:41:28","date_gmt":"2021-06-25T11:11:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/onlykutts.com\/?p=1145"},"modified":"2022-06-01T06:13:10","modified_gmt":"2022-06-01T00:43:10","slug":"complexity-of-simplicity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/onlykutts.com\/index.php\/2021\/06\/25\/complexity-of-simplicity\/","title":{"rendered":"The Complexity of Simplicity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Keeping it simple is actually complex<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

When I was in school I remember my mom telling me to clear up my table which was always cluttered. Arrange your books, toys etc. It would be easy to search. Very simple, straightforward thinking!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imagine the plight when you cannot find what you want \u2013 it is physically and mentally exhausting. Where is it? Where else can it be? It is not surprising that someone has theorized that that clutter is actually emotionally exhausting too. As humans are constantly scanning their environment, the more the clutter, the more the physical and mental power needed to process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the present day world how I wish everyone followed mom\u2019s thinking. It\u2019s greed. What the &%*$?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Humans want more and more. Be it money, be it food, be it gadgets, or anything. And this thought has percolated into all parts of life. From the simple water tap to the technologically superior television. I have had instances where we had TVs with 200 channels but we do not use more than 30. I look at the TV remote and wonder if this is from outer space. Look at the PC keyboard and I notice I don\u2019t use many functions as I don’t understand them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why and how is it that all the things that were supposed to make our lives so easy instead made them more complex? Why is so much technology still so hard? And the more we want \u2013 the more complex it gets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interestingly the consumer behaviour polls say something unique. In a 2002 poll, the Consumer Electronics Association discovered that 87% of people said ease of use is the most important thing when it comes to new technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Philips deployed researchers in seven countries, asking nearly 2,000 consumers to identify the biggest societal issue that the company should address. The response was loud and urgent. “Almost immediately, we hit on the notion of complexity and its relationship to human beings,” says Andrea Ragnetti, Philips’s chief marketing officer. Consumers told the researchers that they felt overwhelmed by the complexity of technology. Some 30% of home-networking products were returned because people couldn’t get them to work. Nearly 48% of people had put off buying a digital camera because they thought it would be too complicated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is probably the greatest human-innovation paradox: We demand more and more from the stuff in our lives–more features, more uses, more functions, more power, more of XYZ –and yet we also increasingly demand that it be easy to use. It’s a conundrum–between the need to load it with arguably cool features and the need to make it simple to use. How paradoxical it sounds when the sales pitch harps on \u201cfully loaded\u201d (features \u2013yes! complexity \u2013 full loaded!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the problems is that the engineers, marketing men, and designers operate in silos that make delivering on the simplicity promise so hard. They are far removed from the demands of the customer or as in many instances one department holds sway over the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can also blame it on arrogance. My son cannot figure out why both my wife and I go to him for some tech issues on our PC. He has an air \u2013 oh that\u2019s simple, you could not get that?! And to be honest, I do it with my mom too. Some of the engineers and marketing folks cannot believe that are people who have problems even finding out the reset button on a mobile phone.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n