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I cannot disagree more.

There is a general confusion that the job of a user interface is to simplify the system, where that is the last thing a user interface should do. What a user interface should do is to make it as simple as possible for a user to understand and interact with the system.

Google's system is immensely complex and they have intentionally not given their users all the information and not all the options for interaction. This is intentional of course, but by looking at the user interfaces they provide as is we have to conclude that they are doing a very poor job of giving us access to understand the full complexity.

Imagine if Adobe replaced all their interfaces with a few simplified buttons, one brush to use, filters are automatically applied, lighting automatically adjusted based on personal history etc. No one would use such a program.

The GRPR in this case is pointing out that Google is not showing all the options and when they are they obscure them, ie they have bad user interfaces by making it as difficult as possible for a user to understand and interact with their system.

If anything, this will force Google to make good user interfaces. For, if the measurement of a good interface is about how simple the interface is regardless of the complexity of the underlying system, then all good user interfaces should be reduced to one button. Such a measurement of quality is ignorant and cannot further any skill in designing user interfaces.



What is simple? What is simple enough? For who?

This is entirely subjective and meaningless unless you have a way of measuring it objectively.

All it’s actually doing is making people change things, basically arbitrarily, in the hope it’ll make things better.

Maybe the intent is vaguely in the right place, but I’m pretty skeptical of any kind of magic bullet for making people make “good” user interfaces.

I think it is far from clear this will make things better, not worse.




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