Thursday, September 13, 2007

Ease of Use v. Control

It seems that in order to make something easier to use, the user must have less control over that something. For example:

automatic v. manual transmission cars
AOL v. Firefox
zTree v. Java (I've never programmed in Java, but I'm pretty sure this is true)
Nintendo (8-bit) v. X-Box (it's a stretch)

I wonder if there's some inherent property of simplification that requires removal of control...any thoughts?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Call me a control freak but I find driving a manual transition easier in the long run because if something goes wrong I have more control over what the car can and can't do. I feel similarly about the AOL vs. Firefox argument...I don't really have any experience in the other two categories though....